i 


OF  THE 


MIK GO  INDIANS 


.  Avu^ 


MONUMENT  TO  AND 

History  of  the  Mingo  Indians 

Facts  and  Traditions  about  This 
Tribe,  Their  Wars,  Chiefs,  Camps, 
Villages  and  Trails.  Monument 
Dedicated  to  Their  Memory  Near 
the  Village  of  Mingo,  in  Tygarts 
River  Valley  of  West  Virginia. 


PREHISTORIC    AMERICA 


ADDRESSES  AND  ARTICLES  BY 

WILLIAM  H.  COBB  ANDREW  PRICE  HU  MAXWELL 


COPYRIGHTED  1821 

BY 

WILLIAM  H.  COBB 


ARTICLE    I 


BY  CAPTAIN  WILLIAM  H.  COBB 

Vice  President  of  the  National  Historical  Society 
Member  Virginia  Historical  Society 

The  request  that  I  prepare  an  article  on  the  subject  of  the  Mingo  Indians 
in  connection  with  the  proposal  to  build  a  monument  or  marker  to  this  tribe 
of  the  "wild  man"  to  be  located  on  the  Huttonsville  and  Marlinton  Pike  near 
the  mouth  of  Mingo  Run,  in  Mingo  district  of  this  county,  and  near  the  old 
Indian  village  site,  has  been  complied  with  and  here  it  is  well  to  state  that 
it  is  with  difficulty  that  actual  facts  concerning  any  Indian  tribe  are  obtained 
for  any  long  period  of  years,  and  when  a  period  of  a  few  centuries  are  to  be 
covered  it  means  that  most  of  the  information  is  traditional. 

The  Indian  "village  site"  at  Mingo  has  been  regarded  as  the  habitat  of 
this  tribe,  but  it  is  with  no  certainty  that  this  is  at  all  correct,  but  on  the 
other  hand  it  would  appear  that  this  village  was  the  abode  of  some  other 
tribe,  for  we  have  no  account  which  would  make  this  a  Mingo  home,  and  'for 
the  reason  that  the  Mingoes  were  on  the  upper  waters  of  the  Susquehanna 
river  in  Pennsylvania  and  New  York  even  before  the  founding  of  Jamestown, 
and  from  that  date  or  little  later,  made  a  settlement  on  the  waters  of  the 
Ohio  and  still  later  further  west. 

That  there  was  a  village  once  occupied  by  Indians  at  Mingo,  I  take  it 
that  no  one  doubts;  we  have  it  handed  down  from  the  ancestors  of  those  now 
living  in  that  section  that  such  a  site  existed  when  settlement  was  begun  soon 
after  the  Revolution;  not  a  site  of  recent  occupancy,  but  long  decaying,  yet 
retaining  all  the  marks  of  such  a  village,  and  at  this  date  evidences  in  way  of 
flints,  pottery  and  Indian  relics  are  to  be  found  on  Mingo  Run,  and  we  are 
told  that  mounds  on  the  Mingo  Flats  are  still  to  be  found,  making  it  certain 
that  in  that  elevated  and  beautiful  section,  overlooking  the  country  for  miles 
and  miles,  that  such  a  village  existed. 

The  Indian  trails,  over  which  both  public  roads  and  railroads  have  since 
followed,  passed  through  Mingo  Flats,  the  scenery  from  which  appeals  to  the 
white  and  probably  to  the  tribes  that  followed  the  routes,  covering  passes 
from  one  stream  to  another,  some  of  which  at  this  point  lead  Northward,  an- 
other Southward  and  still  another  Westward.  The  principal  route  it  would 
appear  led  from  the  North  from  Saint  George  in  Tucker  county  by  way  of 
Leading  Creek,  up  the  Tygart's  Valley  River  and  thence  to  the  Greenbrier, 
and  near  those  Flats,  one  trail  branched  to  the  East  and  down  Clover  Lick  to 
Greenbrier  river,  the  other  to  the  S.  W.  and  down  Williams  &  Gauley  rivers, 
and  just  west  of  Mingo,  at  now  Brady  gate,  the  path  divided,  one  going  down 
Valley  Fork  of  Elks  to  Elk  river,  the  other  by  Point  Mountain  and  westward 
to  the  head  of  the  Little  Kanawha;  on  the  Valley  river  between  Huttonsville 
and  Mingo,  other  trails  reached  the  Valley;  one  from  the  head  of  the  two 
forks  of  the  Greenbrier,  and  across  the  Cheat  river  and  Cheat  Mountain 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


near  the  head  of  Becca's  Creek;  and  still  another  from  the  Cheat  River  up 
Fishinghawk  and  down  Files  Creek  at  Beverly,  and  still  another  of  these 
paths  came  to  the  Valley  River  from  the  Buckhannon  waters,  across  the  Mid- 
dle Fork  and  down  the  Mill  Creek  to  the  Valley  below  Huttonsville. 

These  several  trails  converging  around  Mingo,  makes  this  point  one  of 
rendezvous,  and  with  the  traditions  we  have  and  the  relics  found  renders  it 
fairly  conclusive  that  such  village  existed,  but  with  any  certainty  of  which 
tribe  built  or  occupied  It,  we  have  no  positive  proof  and  can  only  conjecture; 
most  probably  not  the  Mingo  tribe. 

Among  the  earliest  history  we  have  of  the  Mingo  Indian  is  recited  by 
Thomas  Jefferson  in  his  "Notes"  and  In  discussing  the  Five  Nations  of  In- 
dians, and  referring  to  the  Mohicans,  he  says: 

"This  nation  had  a  close  alliance  with  the  Shawanese,  who  lived  on  the 
Susquehanna  and  to  the  west  of  that  river,  as  far  as  the  Allegheny  Mountains, 
and  carried  on  a  long  war  with  another  powerful  nation  or  confederacy  of 
Indians,  which  lived  to  the  north  of  them  between  Kittatinnery  Mountains 
or  highlands,  and  the  Lake  Ontario,  and  who  called  themselves  Mingoes,  and 
are  called  by  the  present  writers  Iroquois,  by  the  English  the  Five  Nations, 
and  by  the  Indians  to  the  southward,  with  whom  they  were  at  war,  Massa- 
wemacs.  This  war  was  carrying  on  in  its  greatest  fury,  when  Captain  Smith 
first  arrived  in  Virginia.  The  Mingo  warriors  had  penetrated  the  Susque- 
hanna down  to  the  mouth  of  it  In  one  of  his  excursions  up  the  bay,  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Susquehanna,  in  1608,  Captain  Smith  met  six  or  seven  of  their 
canoes  full  of  warriors,  who  were  coming  to  attack  their  enemies  in  the  rear. 
In  an  excursion  which  he  had  made  a  few  weeks  before,  up  the  Rappahannock. 
and  in  which  he  had  a  skirmish  with  a  party  of  the  Manaheads,  and  had  taken  a 
brother  of  one  of  their  chiefs  prisoner,  he  first  heard  of  this  nation.  For  when 
he  asked  the  prisoner  why  his  nation  attacked  the  English,  the  prisoner  said, 
because  his  nation  had  heard  that  the  English  came  from  under  the  world  to 
take  their  world  from  them." 

At  the  period  that  Jefferson  was  writing,  the  Mtngo  was  in  a  confederacy 
with  the  Senecas  in  western  New  York;  the  Mohawks  to  the  eastward,  and 
Onendagees  between  the  two,  and  the  Cayugas  and  Oneidas,  the  two  latter 
being  younger  and  weaker  tribes,  but  all  the  confederacy  having  the  same 
common  language,  and  Jointly  waged  war  on  the  tribes  to  the  south,  and  no 
definite  decisive  battle  in  their  favor  having  been  won,  and  finding  the  enemy 
resourceful,  they  took  into  the  alliance  other  tribes  and  by  this  means  over- 
came the  former  enemy,  who  asked  for  peace  and  put  themselves  under  the 
protection  of  the  Mingoes,  who  required  the  subjugated  to  raise  corn,  hunt 
the  game  for  the  joint  use  of  all,  and  in  this  condition  William  Penn  found 
the  defeated  tribe  in  1682. 

The  Mingo  may  be  taken  as  typical  of  all  the  Indians  in  this,  that  they 
were  in  war  daring,  cunning,  ruthless  and  wicked;  and  in  peace  generous, 
hospitable,  superstitious,  revengeful  and  usually  were  on  the  chase,  and 
while  this  does  not  characterize  all  Indians,  it  is  the  general  rule  among 
them,  and  from  their  own  view  point,  they  were  religious  and  fairly  faithful 
to  their  teachings,  taking  their  metaphors  from  the  sun,  the  clouds,  the  sea- 
sons, the  birds,  the  beast  and  the  vegetable  kingdom.  It  is  not  understood 
nor  agreed  the  soqrce  from  which  the  Indian  came;  whether  from  the  East 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO  INDIANS 


or  indigenous  to  America,  and  it  is  equally  uncertain  about  the  language, 
whether  all  tribes  had  the  same  original  language,  or  by  reason  of  separation 
and  non-intercourse,  each  tribe  originated  his  own  language. 

The  name  Mingo  is  significant  in  its  meaning,  carrying  the  idea  of  the 
despised,  contemptible  and  unworthy  and  that  mark  was  put  upon  them  by 
the  Indian,  not  the  white  man,  and  from  their  conduct  on  many  occasions,  It 
was  not  inappropriate,  but  just  and  due  them. 

The  advent  of  the  white  man  along  the  Atlantic  Coast,  of  itself,  drove  by 
degrees  the  Indian  westward,  and  the  Mingoes  began  actively  to  migrate  be- 
fore 1750,  locating  at  first  on  the  upper  Ohio  river  and  by  the  time  of  the  war 
of  the  Revolution  were  on  the  west  of  the  Ohio  near  where  the  city  of 
Steubenville  now  stands;  later  was  about  Sandusky,  and  as  time  passed,  so 
the  Mingo  on  further  west  till  now  only  a  small  band  have  habitation  in 
Oklahoma. 

It  is  said  that  a  nation  without  wars  is  a  nation  without  history,  and  of 
course  the  same  is  true  of  the  Indian,  but  the  Mingo  is  not  without  his  full 
participation  in  war  and  all  the  cruelty  of  it.  Prom  1750  to  1790  he  played 
his  wicked  part  in  the  tragedy  of  warfare  and  what  he  and  his  alliance  did 
not  do  was  no  mark  of  indisposition  not  to  do  it,  for  they  left  destruction 
from  Port  Seibert  and  the  South  Branch  country  westward  as  far  as  the 
white  man  had  dared  advance,  but  in  this  they  were  not  alone  for  the  white 
man  at  times  as  the  leader  was  the  instigator  of  the  outrageous  warfare,  and 
Simon  Girty  at  the  head  of  the  Shawnee  was  an  example  participant. 

The  honors  of  war  are  usually  reflected  through  the  commanding  gen- 
eral, but  with  the  Indian  it  was  the  Chief,  and  what  mighty  ones  the  Mingoes 
may  have  had  at  different  periods,  we  cannot  ever  know,  but  history  has  given 
us  the  name  of  Little  Eagle  (Kisopila)  who  in  an  unexpected  fight  with  a  few 
men  under  Captain  Gibson  near  Fort  Pitt  in  1763,  the  Mingoes  gave  fight  with 
the  result  of  Captain  Gibson  completely  taking  off  the  head  of  Little  Eagle, 
and  it  is  probable  that  this  combat  gave  more  impetus  to  the  Big  Knife,  of  the 
Nation  of  Big  Knife  (the  designation  the  Indians  gave  the  Virginians  ever 
after)  than  any  other  thing;  but  it  is  not  known  whether  it  was  the  sword  of 
the  saber  kind  or  an  actual  long  knife  which  the  Virginian  used  In  close  con- 
tact, but  this  weapon  was  a  "night-mare"  to  an  Indian,  whether  awake  or 
asleep. 

It  was  about  this  period  that  Kentucky  was  first  being  explored,  and  at 
which  time  no  tribe  claimed  exclusive  rights  to  the  hunting  ground,  probably 
the  richest  game  country  ever  trod  by  Indians  east  of  the  Mississipi,  and  as 
this  developed  we  see  our  Mingo  along  with  the  Cherokee,  Shawnees,  Catawbas 
and  Delawares  and  others  contending  for  the  exclusive  rights  and  such  bloody 
conflicts  resulted  that  it  in  time  became  known  as  the  "dark  and  bloody 
ground." 

The  Chief  of  the  Mingoes  to  whom  more  notice  has  been  given  than  all 
their  other  leaders,  was  John  Logan,  whose  education,  character  and  traits 
have  made  his  ancestry  uncertain,  but  his  father  was  probably  Ehilkellamy, 
a  celebrated  chief  of  the  Cayugus,  and  born  about  1725  at  Shamokin,  Penn- 
sylvania; another  impression  is  that  he  was  the  son  of  a  French  Canadian, 
and  adopted  by  the  Oneidas,  the  allied  tribe  to  Mingo;  be  that  as  it  may,  he 
took  the  name  of  Logan  from  James  Logan  who  was  Colonial  Secretary  and 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


later  Governor  of  Pennsylvania  and  resided  in  the  Susquehanna  River  country 
until  about  1770,  when  he  went  with  others  to  the  Mingo — Town  of  that  tribe 
in  Ohio. 

In  his  new  home  for  a  time  he  appears  to  have  not  shared  in  the  spirit  of 
his  tribemen  and  allied  tribes,  but  was  disposed  to  live  peacefully  with  the 
whites. 

The  continued  advance  of  the  white  man  westward  and  his  conflict  with 
the  Indian  here  and  there  and  now  and  then,  and  in  these  conflicts  Indians 
killed  and  destroyed  white  settlements,  and  occasionally  inoffensive  Indians 
were  killed  with  the  view  that  the  deader  the  Indian  is  the  better  he  is, 
brought  on  the  conflict  known  as  the  French  and  Indian  war  and  later 
brought  about  the  great  battle  at  the  Mouth  of  the  Kanawha,  which  was  in  a 
way  to  settle  the  ownership  of  the  Ohio  valley,  especially  the  portion  to  the 
east,  but  in  this  contest,  probably  the  most  decisive  battle  ever  fought  be- 
tween the  whites  and  the  Indians,  and  won  for  the  former  both  banks  of 
the  Ohio. 

Preceding  the  battle  at  Point  Pleasant,  Logan's  family  was  living  near 
Chillicothe,  but  being  at  the  time  at  the  mouth  of  Yellow  Creek  in  1774  an 
Indian  massacre  occurred  in  which  Logan's  family,  probably  having  only  a 
sister  but  possibly  a  wife,  but  no  children,  and  this  inflamed  the  allied  tribes 
of  Indians  to  such  an  extent  that  Logan  became  the  leader  not  only  of  his 
own  people,  but  any  who  would  follow,  and  crossing  to  the  east  and  on  both 
sides  of  the  Ohio,  he  and  his  people  destroyed  the  whites  and  their  settle- 
ments, leaving  neither  woman  or  child  in  their  wake,  and  this  led  the  Vir- 
ginians to  take  up  arms  and  bring  about  the  battle  of  Point  Pleasant,  and 
generally  known  as  Dunmore's  war — he  being  then  Colonial  Governor  of 
Virginia. 

This  massacre  of  the  Indians  was  by  Logan  attributed  to  Captain  Michael 
Cresap,  a  Marylander,  but  history  is  now  convincing  that  Cresap  was  not 
present  at  this  shameful  massacre,  but  probably  took  part  in  other  "killings" 
where  he  felt  that  justice  was  only  being  meted  out  to  the  deserving  ones. 

When  the  Dunmore  war  was  concluded  by  a  peace  or  treaty  at  Chillicothe, 
the  Chiefs  of  all  the  tribes  taking  part  in  the  battle  of  the  Mouth  of  Kanawha, 
appeared  except  John  Logan,  the  Mingo  head;  he  being  sent  for,  refused  to 
appear,  but  sent  that  famous  message  that  school  boys  many  years  were  re- 
quired to  recite  on  Friday  afternoon  before  the  country  school  closed  for  the 
week;  this  speech  reads: 

"I  appeal  to  any  white  man  to  say,  if  he  ever  entered  Logan's  cabin  hun- 
gry, and  he  gave  him  not  meat;  if  he  ever  came  cold  and  naked  and  he  clothed 
him  not.  During  the  course  of  the  last  long  and  bloody  war  Logan  remained 
idle  in  his  cabin,  an  advocate  of  peace.  Such  was  my  love  for  the  whites, 
that  my  countrymen  pointed  as  they  passed  and  said,  'Logan  is  the  friend  of 
the  white  men.'  I  had  even  thought  to  have  lived  with  you,  but  for  the  injury 
of  one  man.  Colonel  Cresap,  the  last  spring,  in  cold  blood,  and  unprovoked, 
murdered  all  the  relations  of  Logan,  not  even  sparing  my  women  and  chil- 
dren. There  runs  not  a  drop  of  my  blood  in  the  veins  of  any  living  creature. 
This  called  on  me  for  revenge.  I  have  sought  it;  I  have  killed  many;  I  have 
fully  glutted  my  vengeance;  for  my  country  I  rejoice  at  the  beams  of  peace. 
But  I  do  not  harbor  a  thought  that  mine  is  the  joy  of  fear.  Logan  never  felt 

6 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


fear.  He  will  not  turn  on  his  heel  to  save  his  life.  Who  is  there  to  mourn 
for  Logan? — Not  one." 

Logan  was  killed  in  1780  on  his  return  from  Detroit  by  his  nephew,  with 
whom  Logan  had  brought  on  a  difficulty  which  the  nephew  could  not  avoid. 

It  would  appear  that  West  Virginians  have  done  their  full  duty  to  the 
end  that  the  Mingo  tribe  and  its  last  big  Chief  may  be  duly  and  properly  pre- 
served in  the  State's  history,  not  so  much  so  by  monuments,  but  by  naming  a 
county  Mingo,  and  naming  another  for  the  Chief  of  the  tribe,  and  still  not 
satisfied,  also  called  the  seat  of  the  county  by  the  name. 

Especially  is  this  true  when  we  contemplate  that  neither  Chief  Logan 
nor  his  tribe  ever  temporarily  or  permanently  had  their  abode  within  the 
territory  of  Logan  or  Mingo  counties,  and  it  was  only  the  speech  or  supposed 
speech  of  Logan  that  brought  fame  to  himself  or  his  tribe. 


ARTICLE    II 


BY  ANDREW  PRICE 

Attention  Is  called  to  the  article  reproduced  In  this  issue  prepared  by 
Capt.  Cobb,  of  Randolph  County,  about  our  pet  Indians,  the  Mlngos.  There 
Is  much  valuable  historical  matter  in  the  article  and  it  is  well  worth  your 
attention. 

But  we  must  enter  a  vigorous  protest  against  two  of  the  historian's  con- 
clusions— first  that  the  Mingos  did  not  live  at  Mingo  Flats,  and  second,  that 
Mingo  ought  to  be  spelt  with  a  little  m,  as  it  means  outlaw  or  some  such 
name. 

We  know  exactly  how  the  Captain's  mind  was  poisoned  on  this  subject. 
He  is  echoing  conclusions  reached  by  historians  who  lived  in  other  states 
and  who  have  cast  doubts  on  the  identity  of  the  tribe.  It  all  goes  to  show 
that  the  only  way  to  preserve  the  history  of  your  own  people  is  to  do  it  your- 
self and  not  depend  on  some  person  a  thousand  miles  away  to  do  you  justice. 
Such  men  do  not  know  and  they  do  not  care. 

To  doubt  that  the  Mingo  Indians  once  had  their  tribal  center  at  Mingo 
Flats  is  equivalent  to  what  would  be  the  case  if  some  historian  would  arise 
a  hundred  years  hence  and  deny  that  there  were  ever  any  catfish  in  Green- 
brier  River,  and  then  cap  the  climax  by  adding  that  he  had  his  doubts  if  there 
ever  was  such  a  fish  anyway. 

An  old  man  told  us  thirty  years  ago  that  the  Indians  that  last  lived  In 
this  section  were  Mingos  and  he  could  remember  when  there  were  traces  of 
their  camps  in  the  periwinkle  shell  piles  along  the  river.  We  never  doubted 
that  until  we  began  to  read  all  the  histories  that  came  to  hand  and  then  for 
a  season  we  doubted  that  there  ever  was  such  an  animal  as  the  Mingo.  But 
as  time  went  on  we  gathered  a  great  mass  of  information  and  got  to  the  time 
when  we  could  weigh  evidence  better,  we  saw  that  tradition  is  true  and  that 
the  last  Indian  residents  of  these  hills  and  valleys  were  Mingos  and  that  they 
had  their  city  at  Mingo  Flats,  where  they  raised  their  winter  corn. 

Washington  made  his  way  to  the  French  Forts  on  the  Ohio  and  reported 
the  Mingos  living  on  the  waters  of  that  river.  Robert  Files  and  David  Tygart 
settled  in  Tygarts  Valley  in  1754.  This  was  the  year  after  Washington  had 
been  at  the  forks  of  the  Ohio.  Files  and  Tygart  found  an  Indian  town  at 
Mingo  Flats  and  determined  to  abandon  the  country  on  account  of  the  con- 
tiguity of  an  Indian  village.  Before  Files  could  move,  he  and  his  whole 
family  were  killed  by  the  Indians. 

Just  about  this  time  Greenbrier,  the  site  of  the  town  of  Marlinton  was 
made  a  fortified  place  to  watch  the  Warrior's  Road,  known  generally  as  the 
Seneca  Trail.  In  1755,  Braddock  took  a  big  army  into  the  woods  Just  north 
of  us  and  there  met  the  Shawnees,  the  Delawares,  and  the  Mingos,  and  other 
Indians  allied  with  the  French  and  left  800  dead  men  on  the  field  whose  bones 
whitened  in  the  sun  for  three  years. 

8 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


After  that  the  only  place  held  by  the  whites  for  three  years  west  of  the 
Alleghany  was  the  Greenbrier  Valley  centering  around  Marlinton. 

But  vengeance  overtook  the  slayers  of  Braddock's  men.  The  Iroquols, 
with  headquarters  in  what  is  now  the  State  of  New  York,  had  at  that  time 
kept  unbroken  a  contract  with  the  New  York  settlers  made  138  years  before, 
with  the  Dutch  of  New  Amsterdam.  Corlear  was  the  "Dutchman's  name  who 
made  that  treaty  and  for  170  years  the  Indians  called  the  governors  of  New 
York,  respectively,  The  Corlear.  This  bond  endured  and  was  stronger  than 
death,  for  when  the  colonies  declared  their  independence,  these  Indians  ad- 
hered to  Great  Britain,  and  the  Americans  for  that  literally  wiped  them  off 
of  the  face  of  the  earth. 

After  Braddock's  defeat,  the  Iroquois,  with  that  as  an  excuse,  or  without 
one,  swept  the  whole  State  of  West  Virginia  clear  of  every  French  Indian 
ally,  and  passed  a  law  that  no  strange  Indian  should  live  in  the  territory  east 
of  the  Ohio  River.  Therefore  the  Mingos  abandoned  their  town  at  Mingo 
Flats  and  moved  to  the  west  bank  of  the  Ohio,  just  above  Wheeling,  at  the 
place  called  Mingo  Bottom,  and  from  that  time  forth  they  raided  West  Vir- 
ginia, and  killed  more  white  people  than  all  the  other  tribes  combined.  After 
an  outrage,  it  was  often  hard  to  tell  what  tribe  of  Indians  was  to  blame,  but 
the  Mingos  were  most  often  identified.  Among  the  occasions  the  Mingos 
were  identified  as  being  present  were:  Deckers  Creek,  New  River  foray, 
Muskingum,  Simpson  Creek,  Kelly  raid,  Muddy  Creek,  Big  Lick,  Point  Pleas- 
ant, Fort  Pitt,  Fort  Laurens,  Piqua,  Tuscarawa  River,  and  Bryants  Station. 

In  the  seventeen  seventies  when  the  permanent  settlers  came  to  the 
Tygarts  Valley  they  found  abandoned  houses  of  the  Mingos  at  Mingo  Flats. 
Let  it  be  known  that  the  Mingos  were  our  private  scourge  and  that  the  reason 
that  they  are  being  lost  in  obscurity  is  because  the  local  West  Virginian  his- 
torians have  let  northern  people  do  their  writing  for  them.  Roosevelt  calls 
the  Mingos  a  mongrel  banditti  like  the  renegade  Cherokees.  Just  because 
the  Mingos  were  making  it  hot  for  the  settlers  who  possessed  themselves  of 
their  ancient  domain  around  the  extreme  headwaters  of  the  Ohio,  and  at- 
tending strictly  to  their  own  territory  the  northern  historian  has  slighted 
them.  But  they  were  very  real  to  our  ancestors. 

Simon  Girty  was  a  Mingo  Chief,  but  the  great  chief  was  the  literary 
Logan.  Logan  also  had  a  slogan:  "Ten  for  one."  Meaning  ten  white  scalps 
for  every  red  scalp  lost.  Captain  Cobb  says  his  name  was  John  Logan.  We 
deem  it  impossible  to  have  been  fed  on  Logan  since  we  were  in  the  first  reader 
and  not  to  have  heard  him  called  John.  Why  John? 

It  was  well  known  that  his  name  was  Tah-gah-jute,  but  then  as  now 
white  men  were  impatient  of  strange  names.  "You  say  your  name  Is  Grab- 
tiswistisky?  Its  Graham  from  now  on."  So  it  was  Logan,  and  now  John 
Logan.  Some  doubt  has  been  cast  on  the  authenticity  of  the  speech  of  Logan, 
but  there  need  not  be.  It  was  delivered  in  the  Mingo  language  to  Col.  Gibson 
who  wrote  it  down  and  then  translated  it.  Still  we  wonder  what  It  would 
have  sounded  like  if  Logan  had  had  a  less  eminent  secretary. 

A  great  many  historians  think  until  Col.  Gibson  edited  the  speech  that  it 
was  in  the  following  words,  to-wit:  "Tell  Dunmore  to  go  to  hell!"  And  that 
the  speech  then  was  translated  into  English  by  the  gifted  Colonel. 

It  is  a  pretty  good  speech.      It  makes    a  good  oration  for  a  schoolboy. 

9 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


Maybe  you  have  noticeQ  that  we  occasionally  quote  from  other  authors.  One 
of  the  earliest  that  we  remember  stealing  was  when  the  world  was  young. 
We  were  playing  Indian.  Our  name  was  Bear  Track  and  we  were  supposed 
to  be  an  extra  bad  Indian.  We  were  captured.  We  were  told  that  we  were 
to  be  burned  at  the  stake  after  each  separate  hair  was  pulled  out.  Our  reply 
was  firm  and  dignified.  "Bear  Track  never  felt  fear.  He  would  not  turn  up- 
on his  heel  to  save  his  life."  We  can  remember  it  as  if  it  was  yesterday,  in- 
cluding a  stone-bruise  on  the  aforesaid  heel. 

Bear  Track  appeals  to  Captain  Cobb  to  restore  the  Mingos  and  to  set 
them  down  on  Mingo  Flats  where  they  properly  belong,  and  keep  away  from 
all  of  that  trash  that  foreigners  are  writing.  Bear  Track  appeals  to  him  to 
know  why  he  has  taken  his  pen  in  his  hand  and  massacred  all  the  Mingos,  so 
that  not  one  remains.  Bear  track  has  killed  many,  but  Captain  Cobb  has 
killed  them  all. 


10 


ARTICLE    HI 


BY  Hu  MAXWELL 

I  have  read  with  interest  in  some  late  West  Virginia  papers  that  a  move- 
ment is  on  foot  in  Randolph  county  to  erect  a  monument  on  the  site  of  a  for- 
mer Indian  village  at  Mingo  near  the  head  of  Valley  river.  This  is  a  com- 
mendable movement  in  the  cause  of  history,  but  I  take  it  that  in  erecting  this 
monument,  it  is  not  the  intention  to  mark  the  former  home  of  any  particular 
tribe  of  Indians.  It  is  not  known,  and  in  all  human  probability,  never  can  be 
known,  what  tribe  occupied  the  town  which  was  once  there.  Authentic  his- 
tory is  absolutely  silent  on  the  subject.  The  name  indicates  that  somebody, 
at  some  time,  supposed  that  it  had  been  a  Mingo  village.  When  I  was  collect- 
ing material  for  my  history  of  Randolph  county,  I  was  not  able  to  find  out 
when,  by  whom,  or  for  what  reason,  the  name  was  first  given,  though  I  was 
quite  sure  that  Indians  of  the  Mingo  tribe  never  lived  there. 

The  broad  fact  may  be  accepted  as  certain  that  when  the  portion  of  West 
Virginia  lying  between  the  Ohio  river  and  the  Alleghany  mountains  first  be- 
came known  to  English-speaking  people,  it  had  no  Indian  inhabitants  other 
than  roaming  hunters  who  occasionally  wandered  through  it.  There  were  no 
towns  or  permanent  camps. 

It  had  an  Indian  population  at  an  earlier  time,  as  is  proved  by  remains 
of  towns  and  camps.  The  remains  of  the  village  of  Mingo  belonged,  no 
doubt,  to  that  earlier  period,  as  also  did  the  sites  of  camps  at  Horse  Shoe  on 
Cheat  river,  at  Crooked  run  near  Point  Pleasant,  and  at  many  other  places 
in  the  state. 

It  is  known,  within  a  reasonable  degree  of  certainty,  but  not  with  abso- 
lute certainty,  when  and  why  the  Indian  population  between  the  Ohio  river 
and  the  mountains  ceased  to  exist.  It  was  about  one  hundred  years  before 
the  first  permanent  settlers  located  on  Tygarts  river  and  Cheat  River. 

The  great  historical  store  house  of  information,  bearing  directly  and  in- 
directly on  that  subject,  is  known  as  '  The  Jesuit  Relations,"  which  records 
were  written  by  Catholic  missionaries  between  the  years  1610  and  1750,  for 
the  most  part.  Those  missionaries  lived  among  the  Indians  from  Hudson  Bay 
to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  and  from  Nova  Scotia  to  the  Black  Hills.  The  collec- 
tion of  reports,  mostly  in  French  and  Latin,  has  been  published  in  sixty-five 
volumes,  aggregating  more  than  30,000  pages.  They  deal  with  geography, 
natural  history,  travel,  religion,  martyrdom,  work,  famine,  exploration,  and 
almost  every  other  topic  that  could  interest  a  missionary.  The  records  throw 
a  great  deal  of  light  on  the  Indians  of  the  whole  region,  but  do  not  deal  par- 
ticularly with  those  who  then  lived  or  had  lived  in  West  Virginia.  However, 
passages  here  and  there  throw  light  on  that  matter. 

From  this  information,  supplemented  by  information  from  other  sources, 
it  is  inferred  that  the  extermination  of  the  Indians  of  West  Virginia  was  com- 
pleted about  the  year  1672  or  a  full  century  before  the  first  permanent  settle- 
ment in  Tygart's  valley.  The  work  of  exterminating  those  Indians  probably 

U 


HISTORY  OF  THE    MINGO   INDIANS 


extended  over  several  years,  and  a  precise  date  cannot  be  claimed,  and  de- 
tails of  the  affair  are  meagre. 

The  annihilation  was  the  work  of  Indians.  That  Is  one  sin  that  does  not 
rest  on  the  white  man's  head,  except  that  it  might  be  indirectly  imputed  to 
Dutch  traders  along  the  Hudson  river  who  supplied  the  guns  with  which  It 
was  done.  In  the  western  part  of  the  state  of  New  York  lived  tribes  of 
superior  Indians,  Including  Mohawks,  Senecas,  and  others,  known  collectively 
as  Iroquois  or  Five  Nations. 

After  they  procured  firearms  by  barter  from  the  Dutch,  they  became  irre- 
sistible to  their  Indian  enemies,  who  still  fought  with  bows  and  clubs.  Re- 
markable conquests  followed.  West  Virginia  was  swept  clean  of  Its  Indian 
population,  and  the  Iroquois  penetrated  as  far  south  as  Georgia  and  west  to 
the  Black  Hills. 

It  Is  not  unlikely  that  the  village  at  Mingo  was  wiped  out  at  that  time,  as 
well  as  that  In  the  Horse  Shoe  In  Tucker  county,  but  we  do  not  know  that 
such  was  the  case. 

Those  northern  conquerors  were  often  called  "Sennegars,"  which  was 
the  frontiersman's  pronunciation  of  the  tribe  Seneca.  Their  war  paths  were 
sometimes  called  "Sennegar  Trails."  One  such  led  south  through  Virginia 
along  the  eastern  base  of  the  Blue  Ridge,  which  was  mentioned  by  early  ex- 
plorers who  watched  keenly  for  "Sennegar  smoke" — meaning  hostile  camp 
fires. 

Another  "Sennegar  Trail,"  leading  from  western  New  York  southward, 
passed  the  site  of  Elklns,  and  was  well  Identified,  and  kept  Its  name,  until 
recently,  and  perhaps  some  portions  may  be  seen  yet.  The  name  is  correctly 
spelled  Seneca,  but  the  former  pronunciation  was  "Sennegar,"  and  very  likely 
that  was  the  way  the  Indians  pronounced  It. 

We  may  guess  (but  It  Is  only  a  guess)  that  the  village  at  Mingo  was  de- 
stroyed by  enemies  who  came  south  over  that  trail,  scouting  In  all  directions 
for  victims.  They  must  have  made  a  clean  sweep,  for  later  explorers,  John 
Sally,  In  particular,  and  Christopher  Gist  later,  could  not  find  an  Indian  camp 
between  the  mountains  and  the  Ohio  river,  though  there  were  plenty  of  Indian 
"old  fields,"  showing  where  corn  had  once  been  cultivated. 

The  Indians  who  made  war  on  the  early  white  settlers  in  West  Virginia, 
came,  for  the  most  part,  from  Western  Pennsylvania,  Ohio  and  Michigan. 
Fort  Seybert  was  destroyed  by  Indians,  who  came  over  the  Seneca  trail  from 
the  vicinity  of  Pittsburgh  which  was  then  In  possession  of  the  French.  Dur- 
ing the  Revolutionary  War,  when  Indians  were  specially  troublesome,  Colonel 
Benjamin  Wilson  of  Randolph  county,  and  Colonel  William  Raymond,  of 
Monongalla  county,  had  the  responsibility  of  guarding  the  frontier  from  the 
Greenbrler  River  to  the  Pennsylvania  line.  It  was  their  custom  to  keep 
spies  In  the  woods,  watching  the  crossings  of  the  Ohio,  and  the  paths  leading 
eastward,  In  order  to  give  warning  if  Indians  were  discovered  skulking  toward 
the  settlements. 

Four  or  five  families  of  Indians,  from  western  New  York,  built  a  little 
village  called  Bulltown  in  Braxton  county,  about  1768,  but  it  lasted  only  four 
or  five  years,  and  was  destroyed  by  frontiersmen  from  Lewis  county. 

If  the  monument  which  it  is  proposed  to  build  at  Mingo  shall  be  dedicat- 
ed to  "the  memory  of  a  vanished  race,"  which  once  lived  there,  it  will  be  an  act 

12 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


of  justice  and  will  commemorate  a  fact  in  history ;  but  if  it  shall  be  dedicated 
specifically  to  the  Mingo  tribe,  it  will,  in  my  opinion,  fall  short  of  historic 
accuracy.  I  am  not  aware  of  any  fact  warranting  the  conclusion  that  any 
Mingo  Indians  ever  lived  in  West  Virginia. 

It  is  my  opinion  that  if  one  would  go  back  far  enough,  he  would  find 
Sioux — relatives  of  Sitting  Bull — hunting  and  fishing  in  West  Virginia;  but  at 
any  event,  if  they  were  there,  it  must  have  been  long  before  the  time  of  the 
Iroquois  irruption  that  depopulated  the  region.  It  is  of  secondary  importance 
as  to  what  particular  tribe  may  have  occupied  Mingo  last,  as  all  Indians, 
throughout  the  whole  of  North  and  South  America,  were  of  one  race. 

Chicago,  April  6,  1920. 


13 


ARTICLE    IV 


BY  ANDREW  PPICE 

We  are  aggravated  by  an  article  in  the  Randolph  Enterprise,  from  the 
pen  of  Hu  Maxwell,  in  which  he  casts  doubts  upon  the  identity  of  the  Indians 
who  last  inhabited  the  West  Virginia  territory.  He  says  that  he  is  "not 
aware  of  any  fact  warranting  the  conclusion  that  any  Mingo  Indians  ever 
lived  in  West  Virginia." 

In  other  words,  he  prides  himself  upon  what  he  does  not  know.  Prom 
the  vast  sea  of  human  knowledge  no  one  man  is  ever  able  to  dip  up  more 
than  a  bucketful  of  facts,  so  it  is  easy  for  the  wisest  to  make  a  boast  of  what 
they  do  not  know. 

We  are  getting  out  of  patience  with  the  historians  who  will  neither  admit 
that  the  Mingoes  lived  at  Mingo  Flats  prior  to  their  well  known  habitat  at 
Mingo  Bottom  six  miles  from  Wheeling,  nor  account  for  the  site  of  their  town 
prior  to  that  move.  If  they  did  not  come  from  Mingo  Flats  from  whence  did 
they  come? 

We  are  ready  to  do  this.  We  will  take  the  position  of  the  affirmative  on 
whom  must  fall  the  burden  of  proof  and  debate  before  a  body  of  intelligent  men 
any  place  at  any  time  the  proposition:  That  about  the  middle  of  the  18th 
century,  to-wit,  1750,  the  Mingo  Indians  lived  at  Mingo  Flats  and  that  in 
numbers  they  did  not  then  or  at  any  time  prior  to  their  westward  emigration 
exceed  more  than  one  hundred  families. 

We  would  bar  as  judges  those  who  have  committed  themselves  to  the 
statements  that  there  are  no  such  animals  as  the  Mingoes.  Just  because  the 
northern  historians  failed  to  note  that  a  small  and  insignificant  tribe  fought 
a  thirty  years'  war  to  keep  back  the  tide  of  white  immigration  that  broke 
over  the  crest  of  the  Alleghany,  many  have  said  in  their  haste  that  there 
were  no  Mingoes,  and  the  first  rule  of  the  historian  is  to  stick  to  his  published 
statements  however  mistaken  he  may  be  in  the  facts. 

All  we  would  ask  would  be  men  who  are  able  to  weigh  evidence  and  give 
proper  weight  to  the  circumstances.  We  feel  that  the  poison  of  the  doubter 
is  about  to  wipe  out  the  memory  and  even  the  identity  of  the  warriors  who 
terrorized  our  Immediate  ancestors  for  a  full  generation,  fighting  from  the 
Ohio  River  to  the  height  of  land,  knowing  every  by  path  and  trail,  and  tak- 
ing toll  for  their  lost  heritage.  That  it  is  time  for  those  of  us  who  are  living 
to  fix  the  fact  that  the  Mingo  was  a  peculiar  West  Virginia  aborigine,  and 
the  one  we  are  bound  to  perpetuate  and  preserve  in  the  interest  of  truth 
and  history. 

As  the  largest  audience  that  we  could  hope  to  have  would  be  but  a  hand- 
ful compared  to  the  minds  that  we  can  reach  through  the  printed  page,  we 
will  give  a  short  resume  of  some  of  the  historical  evidence  that  lies  at  hand 
and  which  ought  to  be  accepted  without  question.  Of  course  if  a  person  will 

14 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


not  believe  Moses  and  the  prophets  he  is  in  such  a  mulish  state  that  he  will 
not  believe  though  one  arose  from  the  dead. 

It  is  a  tradition  with  the  Mingoes  that  they  are  descended  from  the  Eries, 
who  were  broken  up  and  destroyed  and  absorbed  into  the  Senecas  in  1656. 
That  was  a  tremendous  slaughter.  The  Eries  were  in  a  stockade  and  they 
defied  the  Iroquois.  The  Iroquois  of  which  the  Senecas  were  the  fighting 
fools  made  it  a  policy  of  their  nation  never  to  fail  to  carry  by  assault  any  stock- 
ade or  fort.  In  this  case  the  slaughter  was  fearful  but  they  did  carry  the 
stockade  and  at  places  human  blood  ran  knee  deep.  The  remnant  of  the 
Eries  were  broken  up  into  parties  and  settled  with  the  Senecas  along  the 
Alleghany  Mountain  far  to  the  south  and  became  by  subjugation  Iroquois. 

The  Senecas  were  known  as  the  "Keepers  of  the  Great  Back  Doorway" 
in  the  League  of  the  Five  Nations,  and  they  never  agreed  to  lay  down  their 
arms. 

In  the  course  of  the  next  hundred  years  the  Senecas  successfully  held 
the  eastern  range  of  mountains  in  the  United  States  from  the  Great  Lakes 
to  Georgia.  Think  of  it.  As  you  walk  along  the  street  known  as  Seneca 
Trail  in  this  town,  you  are  literally  treading  in  the  foot  steps  of  great  armies 
of  Seneca  warriors  who  policed  the  mountain  barrier  and  held  back  the 
Shawnees  and  other  hostile  Indians  from  the  west. 

At  Mingo  Flats  for  a  hundred  years  was  a  town  that  was  one  of  a  chain 
of  forts  keeping  the  "Great  Back  Doorway."  They  were  counted  as  Iroquois 
warriors  and  if  they  had  remained  loyal  to  the  Iroquois  nation  it  is  not  likely 
that  they  would  have  been  distinguished  by  name  and  heard  of  in  history. 
Living  at  a  distance  from  the  Five  Nations  they  were  known  as  Mingoes,  a 
word  that  had  at  that  time  the  same  meaning  as  the  British  give  to  the  word 
Colonial. 

But  the  Mingoes  of  Mingo  Flats  were  so  far  from  the  sphere  of  influence 
of  the  Iroquois  nation  that  they  were  corrupted  by  the  Shawnees  whose  hunt- 
ing parties  came  up  the  Great  Kanawha,  New,  and  Greenbrier  Rivers,  and 
thus  reached  the  out  post  at  Mingo  Flats  and  turned  them  against  their  own 
nation.  There  is  no  question  but  they,  the  Mingo  Flat  Indians,  joined  the 
French  in  Braddock's  war,  while  the  Iroquois  remained  loyal  to  England. 
And  there  is  no  question  but  that  the  Mingoes  were  living  at  Mingo  Flats  In 
1755,  the  date  of  Braddock's  Defeat,  for  David  Tygart  and  Files  wrote  in 
1754  that  they  would  have  to  leave  the  valley  for  they  were  close  to  an 
Indian  village  and  that  it  was  too  dangerous  to  remain  there. 

Probably  immediately  afterwards,  the  Iroquois  drove  the  Mingoes  to  the 
west  bank  of  the  Ohio  and  in  1766,  their  town  of  60  families  was  the  only 
Indian  town  on  the  banks  of  the  Ohio  from  Pittsburgh  to  Louisville.  From 
that  town  they  made  war  on  West  Virginian  settlers  for  nearly  a  generation. 
They  became  famous  as  warriors  and  the  word  Mingo  which  had  been  more 
or  less  general  in  its  natuie  became  their  own  peculiar  tribe  name.  The  big 
chief  Logan  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  adding  to  the  fame  of  the  small  but 
distinctive  fighting  band. 

From  Mingo  Town  of  Mingo  Bottom,  now  Steubenville,  Ohio,  the  tribe 
moved  to  the  headwaters  of  the  Sciota  and  Sandusky,  sold  out  to  the  govern- 
ment, moved  to  Kansas,  sold  out  again,  and  moved  to  the  Indian  Territory, 
where  they  are  known  as  the  Sandusky  Senecas.  In  1905  they  numbered  366 

15 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


persons,  and  have  just  about  held  their  own  since  they  lived  at  Mingo  Flats. 

They  fought  with  the  French  at  Battle  of  Point  Pleasant.  Logan  did  not 
come  in  person  to  treat  for  peace  after  that  battle  but  he  sent  a  speech  by 
Col.  Gibson.  Roosevelt  did  them  an  injustice  to  refer  to  the  Mingoes  as  a 
mongrel  banditti.  Mingo  was  a  term  used  by  the  eastern  Indians  for  all  the 
Iroquois,  composed  of  five  and  afterwards  six  nations.  The  first  name  that 
the  Ohio  River  bore  was  Black  Mingo  River.  The  Black  Mingoes  were  the 
Eries,  conquered  and  absorbed  by  the  Senecas,  the  military  branch  of  the 
Five  Nations.  When  the  Mingoes  of  Mingo  Flats,  driven  out  of  the  great 
Iroquois  nation,  retained  their  organization  for  the  sole  purpose  of  war  on 
those  who  dared  settle  in  the  West  Virginia  territory,  the  colonials  gradually 
restricted  the  name  to  mean  those  few  hundred  fighting  men  on  the  west 
bank  of  the  Ohio  who  raided  this  country  for  a  business,  keeping  up  an  al- 
liance with  the  Shawnees,  a  powerful  confederacy. 

Mingo  Flats  is  the  extreme  head  of  the  Ohio  River.  There  it  is  a  bold 
trout  stream  issuing  from  the  Cheat  Mountain.  It  is  a  historical  fact  that  the 
tribe  that  settled  near  Wheeling  lived  immediately  before  that  on  the  head 
of  the  Ohio  at  a  place  so  far  distant  from  the  Iroquois  center  that  they  were 
thrown  more  with  the  Shawnees  and  Delawares  and  were  thereby  weaned 
away  from  their  allegiance  to  the  Five  Nations.  This  could  not  have  meant 
the  head  of  the  Alleghany  for  there  they  would  have  been  in  the  heart  of  the 
Five  Nations.  Besides  the  Alleghany  rivers  is  not  the  head  of  the  Ohio.  It 
lacks  perhaps  a  hundred  miles  of  being  the  uttermost  fountain.  Mingo  Flats 
is  the  head  of  the  Ohio  and  that  is  the  settlement  that  corresponds  to  the 
description  of  a  town  on  the  head  of  the  Ohio  River  so  far  distant  from  the 
home  nation  as  to  throw  them  in  constant  contact  with  the  Shawnees,  and 
graves  up  and  down  the  Greenb'rier  Valley  bear  mute  testimony  to  the  fact 
that  the  Shawnee  walked  in  this  valley  in  the  early  days.  Reference  is  made 
generally  to  the  following  historical  writers  on  Mingo  affairs:  Mooney, 
Bouquet,  Rupp,  Cowley,  Schoolcraft,  Harris,  Lang  and  Taylor. 

It  is  twenty-five  miles  from  Mingo  Flats  to  this  place,  Marlins  Bottom. 
At  the  time  that  the  Mingoes  lived  at  Mingo  Flats,  there  was  a  fort  at  Mar- 
lins Bottom,  in  which  at  times  there  were  as  many  as  150  soldiers.  Without 
a  break  since  then  the  writer  and  his  direct  ancestors  have  lived  at  Marlins 
Bottom,  and  we  have  no  reason  on  earth  to  doubt  the  truth  and  fidelity  of  our 
local  history.  A  gentleman  in  Marlinton  remembers  his  grandmother's  story 
of  the  war-whoop  of  the  Indian  when  Baker  and  twelve  others  were  killed 
here  in  the  last  raid.  He  can  almost  make  you  hear  that  war-whoop  now. 
He  talked  with  a  person  who  heard  it.  On  the  other  hand  a  gentleman  from 
Chicago  who  once  did  a  history  of  Randolph  County  in  the  space  of  six  days 
and  all  very  good,  having  given  the  work  of  historical  research  in  Tygarts 
Valley,  a  lick  and  a  promise,  can  only  say  that  he  did  not  find  credible  evi- 
dence of  the  existence  of  Mingoes  at  Mingo  Flats,  and  having  said  the  horse 
was  sixteen  feet  high,  he  will  not  retract  a  word  of  it. 

We  can  tell  you  how  those  fiends  in  human  form  got  the  name  of  Mingoes. 
When  a  pioneer  returned  from  the  hunt  and  found  his  house  in  ashes  and 
the  mangled  bodies  of  his  family  lying  there,  in  the  bitterness  of  his  woe  he 
cried  out  "Mingo,"  meaning  those  nearby  hostile  Indians  who  once  lived  at 
Mingo  Flats  and  afterwards  moved  down  the  river  to  Mingo  Town,  and  as 

16 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


the  years  went  by  the  name  was  written  in  blood,  and  no  man  should  forget 
it.  And  as  far  as  West  Virginians  are  concerned  the  name  Mingo  has  the 
narrow  and  restricted  meaning  of  one  small  tribe. 

We  have  taken  up  more  space  than  we  thought  to,  but  we  honestly  be- 
lieve that  the  present  generation  can  come  nearer  clearing  this  muddy  water 
than  any  that  may  come  after  us,  and  that  it  ought  to  be  done. 

And  in  conclusion,  we  would  remind  you  that  names  of  places  is  the 
most  reliable  as  well  as  the  most  concrete  evidence  of  a  historical  fact  where 
the  word  is  not  capable  of  a  double  meaning.  Files  creek,  Tygarts  Valley, 
Marlins  Bottom,  Lewisburg,  Braddock,  and  Mingo  Flats,  each  and  every  one 
suggest  the  history  of  the  place  and  such  are  never  wrong. 

Mingo  Flats  was  called  Mingo  Flats  because  the  Mingo  Indians  lived 
there  and  this  is  capable  of  proof  beyond  all  reasonable  doubt. 


ARTICLE  IV -A 

IMAGINATION  VERSUS  HISTORY 
BY  Hu  MAXWELL 

It  is  unfortunate  that  an  attempt  to  do  historical  Justice  in  the  matter  of 
dedicating  the  Indian  monument  at  Mingo  should  be  muddled  by  the  inter- 
jection of  personalities,  as  our  friend,  the  editor  of  the  Pocahontas  Times, 
seems  to  be  trying  to  do.  The  question  is,  did  the  Mingo  Indians  have  a 
village  at  Mingo?  If  they  did  not,  it  would  be  misleading  to  dedicate  the 
monument  to  them. 

Captain  Cobb's  article  deals  with  history  and  shows  that  all  known  evi- 
dence points  to  the  fact  that  the  Mingoes  never  lived  there.  That  ought  to 
settle  the  matter,  unless  stronger  evidence  can  be  cited  to  prove  the  con- 
trary. Thus  far,  no  evidence  whatever  has  been  brought  forward  to  show  that 
the  Mingoes  ever  lived  there. 

What  Mr.  Price  has  published  proves  nothing  except  his  own  opinion. 
His  last  article  is  about  2  per  cent  history,  8  per  cent  tradition,  and  90  per 
cent  imagination.  When  he  attempts  to  cite  history,  he  fails  to  distinguish 
between  fact  and  fiction,  as  is  shown  by  citing  the  following  four  mistakes 
in  his  article: 

1.  He  says:     "The  first  name  the  Ohio  River  bore  was  Black  Mingo 
River."    That  is  not  true,  but  if  it  were  true,  it  would  prove  nothing  in  regard 
to  Mingo  Indians  living  in  Randolph  county. 

2.  He  states:     "David  Tygart  and  Files  wrote  in  1754  that  they  would 
have  to  leave  the  valley,  for  they  were  close  to  an  Indian  village  and  that  it 
was  too  dangerous  to  remain  there."     If  it  were  true  that  this  was  written 

17  a 


ARTICLE    V 


FROM  THE  RANDOLPH  ENTERPRISE 

The  unveiling  of  the  Indian  monument  at  Mingo,  in  the  southern  end  of 
the  county,  at  the  head  of  the  Tygarts  Valley  river,  took  place  in  accordance 
with  the  program  on  Saturday,  September  25,  1920. 

The  monument  stands  about  20  feet  high  and  an  Indian  is  represented 
standing  listening,  looking  and  ready  for  the  "war  path"  upon  short  notice. 

Some  1,200  or  1,500  people  attended  the  meeting  from  Pocahontas  and 
Randolph  counties  and  a  few  from  other  sections,  who  are  candidates  for 
political  honors.  The  dinner  served  was  superb  and  praised  by  all  who  at- 
tended as  being  one  of  the  biggest,  best  and  freest  dinners  ever  offered  in  the 
county. 

Capt.  H.  G.  Kump  was  introduced  about  11  o'clock  in  the  morning  by 
Samuel  H.  Wood,  the  promoter  of  the  monument,  and  the  Beverly  band  an- 
nounced that  something  was  on  and  the  Chairman  introduced  Captain  Wm. 
H.  Cobb,  as  the  first  speaker  for  the  occasion.  Taking  as  his  subject  the 
Prehistoric  Race,  or  America  before  Columbus,  Capt.  Cobb  interested  the 
people  for  half  an  hour,  the  talk  being  favorably  commented  upon  and  many 
requests  made  that  his  speech  be  published. 

Hon.  Andrew  Price  of  Marlinton,  not  being  satisfied  with  the  articles 
heretofore  published  upon  the  subject  of  the  Mingoes  not  having  been  the 
founders  of  the  village  of  Mingo,  insisted  in  a  half  hour's  address  that  his 
position  was  correct  and  detailed  some  very  interesting  Indian  history.  His 
remarks  were  also  requested  to  be  put  into  shape  and  given  to  the  press. 

The  dinner  hour  having  arrived,  the  Chairman  was  in  a  mood  to  enjoy  a 
good  dinner  and  invited  the  people  to  the  spread  and  not  only  himself,  but  all 
enjoyed  what  was  set  before  them  and  the  quantity  was  such  that  a  few  hun- 
dred more  even  if  they  had  been  half  Indians,  could  have  been  fed. 

The  band  played  and  the  chairman  called  for  more  speeches  and  intro- 
duced the  Hon.  Roy  Waugh  of  Upshur  County,  who  told  some  interesting 
stories  and  commented  on  the  question  of  building  a  monument  to  the  pioneers 
who  were  slain  by  the  Indians,  and  in  a  very  happy  way  entertained  the  crowd 
for  twenty  minutes. 

Hon.  Arthur  B.  Koontz  was  called  and  pleasantly  introduced.  He  got  off 
some  good  stories  and  interested  the  gathering  for  several  minutes  taking 
Indian  "skelpts"  and  making  a  very  pleasant  talk. 

Hon.  William  S.  O'Brien  being  on  hand  by  invitation  was  introduced  and 
gave  the  crowd  a  talk  along  the  line  of  the  spiritual  life  and  what  awaits  good 
citizenship,  and  told  only  one  story,  but  a  good  one. 

Dr.  F.  H.  Barren,  who  always  says  the  right  thing  in  its  proper  place  was 
happy  in  his  remarks  and  advised  that  monuments  be  constructed  every  year 
and  mark  the  historical  place  in  the  county,  it  being  good  for  the  community 
and  posterity. 

18 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


Upon  the  monument  is  engraved: 


MINGO 

THIS  MONUMENT  IS  ERECTED  IN 

MEMORY  OF  THE  PASSING 

OF  THE  "RED  MAN" 


An  Indian  village  was  located  near  this  place.  According  to  local  tradi- 
tion it  was  frequented  by  the  Mingo  tribe  and  at  one  time  was  an  Iroquois 
outpost.  Mingo  meaning  "foreign  service."  The  Mingoes  are  said  to  have 
been  expelled  by  the  Iroquois  for  disloyalty.  This  village  was  on  the  trail 
from  the  Lakes  to  the  South,  but  had  been  abandoned  prior  to  the  coming  of 
the  "pale  face." 

From  this  tradition  came  the  name  of  the  present  village,  the  Magisterial 
District  and  the  adjacent  stream — Mingo  Run. 

Tal  gah-Jute,  John  Logan,  the  Mingo  Chief,  is  supposed  to  have  used  this 
habitat.  He  was  terrible  in  warfare,  yet  humane  in  peace  and  was  a  factor 
in  Colonial  days. 

Erected  by  S.  H.  Wood  and  other  descendants  of  the  pioneers  who  located 
near  "this  Indian  trail." 


19 


ARTICLE    VI 


BY  ANDREW  PRICE 
In  The  Pocahontas  Times. 

The  Mingo  monument  to  the  vanised  Mingo  town  was  unveiled  Sept.  25, 
1920,  with  imposing  ceremonies  in  the  presence  of  a  large  assembly.  The 
monument  is  an  artistic  figure  of  an  Indian  chief  set  upon  a  pedestal.  It  is 
prominently  located  on  a  head-land  looking  towards  the  setting  sun.  It  is 
about  half  a  mile  from  the  Confederate  monument  and  it  adds  charm  and 
interest  to  Mingo  Flats  which  is  naturally  one  of  the  beauty  spots  of  the 
world. 

Hon.  S.  H.  Wood,  the  old  residenter,  was  the  active  force  behind  the  move- 
ment. The  good  people  of  Randolph  had  furnished  a  great  feast  for  the  occa- 
sion and  all  were  well  fed.  Addresses  were  made  by  Hon.  H.  G.  Kump,  Hon. 
Arthur  B.  Koontz,  Judge  W.  S.  O'Brien,  Capt.  W.  H.  Cobb,  Hon.  Roy  Waugh, 
and  Andrew  Price,  the  last  named  being  us,  having  been  invited  to  attend 
and  testify  as  to  what  had  occurred  some  hundreds  of  years  prior. 

It  was  agreed  that  it  was  a  historical  meeting,  and  the  crowd  was  asked 
to  indicate  its  love  for  the  study  of  history,  and  one  person  held  up  his  hand 
but  for  all  that  the  audience  listened  intently,  drawing  near  on  the  sod  to 
the  great  well  of  truth  as  it  issued  from  the  grandstand. 

Liars  are  said  to  be  divided  into  three  portions  for  comparison,  as  liars, 
damned  liars,  and  historians,  and  for  that  reason  a  good  text  to  indicate  the 
spirit  of  the  address  would  be  a  part  of  a  verse  of  Scripture  which  being 
slightly  altered  from  the  ancient  Hebrew  was  to  the  effect:  "Ananias  stand 
fourth,"  and  that  we  were  perfectly  willing  to  enact  the  part  of  Ananias,  if 
Lawyer  Kump,  Captain  Cobb,  and  Judge  O'Brien,  would  stand  first,  second 
and  third,  respectively. 

And  in  order  to  keep  the  record  straight  it  should  be  stated  that  accord- 
ing to  the  passage  in  the  well  beloved  McGuffey,  "I  come  to  bury  Caesar  and 
not  to  praise  him,"  for  we  belong  to  the  school  which  holds  fast  to  the  belief 
that  a  good  Indian  is  a  dead  Indian. 

There  has  been  some  criticism  as  to  the  propriety  of  the  descendants  of 
the  pioneers  honoring  the  memory  of  a  cruel  and  a  treacherous  foe,  but  as 
we  read  the  scroll  of  ancient  events,  there  never  was  a  time  when  the  moun- 
taineers were  not  perfectly  happy  and  willing  to  bury  the  Mingo  and  bury 
him  deep.  And  the  importance  of  this  enduring  monument  is  emphasized  by 
the  fact  that  already  doubters  have  arisen  who  are  asserting  that  the  head  of 
the  valley  was  not  peopled  by  a  tribe  of  Indians  who  have  wandered  from  this 
place  through  the  wilderness  to  the  west,  keeping  their  tribal  identity  until 
they  found  their  present  place  of  abode  in  the  Indian  Territory.  And  while 
we  of  the  present  day  do  not  know  it  all,  we  do  know  more  about  the  first 
inhabitants  of  the  valley  than  those  who  will  come  after  us,  and  it  is  fitting 
that  we  do  know  what  the  pioneers  might  have  done  in  a  day  that  is  dead, 
and  fix  the  fact  beyond  dispute. 

20 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


Authentic  history  reaches  back  into  the  seventeenth  century  and  it  is 
crystallized  from  the  time  that  the  white  people  became  firmly  established  on 
the  Atlantic  seaboard.  From  that  time  the  Indians  were  forced  back  into  the 
mountains  and  the  white  people  were  assigned  to  the  country  lying  between 
the  mountains  and  the  ocean.  The  Indian  tribes  became  a  confederacy  under 
the  name  of  the  Iroquois  or  the  Five  Nations,  and  the  division  of  the  territory 
was  so  complete  and  endured  for  so  many  generations,  that  it  was  believed  to 
be  a  permanent  thing,  and  like  our  constitution  which  has  not  as  yet  lasted  as 
long  as  the  partition  of  lands,  it  must  have  seemed  to  the  slow  generations  of 
those  former  times,  that  the  division  of  territory  was  forever. 

When  it  was  first  made,  the  settlers  on  the  seacoast  had  a  vague  idea  of 
the  rich  mountain  country  in  which  we  now  live,  and  believed  that  they  were 
too  rugged  to  explore.  One  of  the  favorite  fallacies  of  those  days  was  that 
the  snow  never  melted  in  the  summer  time  on  these  hills. 

Up  until  comparatively  modern  times,  the  most  authentic  accounts  of  the 
mountains  and  the  lands  west  of  them  were  the  reports  of  the  Jesuits  who 
went  there  as  missionaries  to  the  Indians. 

When  the  Iroquois  had  become  firmly  established  as  a  nation,  the  land 
drained  by  the  Ohio  river  from  the  great  lakes  to  the  Ohio,  was  held  by  a 
powerful  tribe  of  Indians  known  as  the  Eries,  but  they  are  constantly  referred 
to  as  the  Cat  Nation,  because  their  tribal  sign  was  that  of  the  panther.  This 
is  the  tribe  of  whom  it  was  reported  by  a  priestly  voyaguer,  that  he  floated 
down  one  of  the  rivers  in  the  State  of  Ohio  without  ever  being  out  of  sight 
of  a  corn  field. 

Up  to  the  year  1653,  the  Iroquois  had  a  treaty  of  peace  with  this  nation 
which  was  renewed  at  stated  times  with  imposing  ceremonies.  That  year, 
thirty  ambassadors  appeared  at  the  council  lodge  of  the  Iroquois  for  the  pur- 
pose of  continuing  the  treaty.  When  they  had  arrived,  and  before  the  meet- 
ing, a  dispute  arose,  and  one  of  the  ambassadors  killed  an  Iroquois  chief. 
Whereupon  the  Iroquois  arose  and  killed  all  but  five  of  the  visitors,  and  war 
broke  out  between  the  nations,  and  lasted  for  three  years. 

The  end  of  the  war  came  in  1656,  at  which  time  1800  Iroquois  appeared 
before  a  fort  in  the  Cat  Nation  and  demanded  that  it  surrender  to  save  car- 
nage, for  the  invading  chief  told  them  that  it  was  useless  to  resist  for  the 
Master  of  Life  fought  for  them.  The  Eries  replied  that  they  depended  upon 
their  arms  and  acknowledged  no  other  power.  In  this  fort  there  were  an 
army  of  4000  warriors  and  the  women  and  children  of  the  tribe.  Reading  be- 
tween the  lines,  the  superiority  of  the  attacking  force  must  have  consisted  in 
a  cannon  and  gun-power  for  the  fort  was  taken  and  the  Iroquois  entered  the 
fort  and  the  carnage  was  so  great  among  them  that  blood  was  knee  deep  in 
places. 

It  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  the  great  fort  that  was  taken  at  that 
time  was  the  one  still  preserved  by  the  State  of  Ohio,  known  as  Fort  Ancient, 
in  Warren  County.  It  is  a  headland  about  three  hundred  feet  high  overlook- 
ing the  Miami  river  fenced  in  by  a  wall  varying  in  height  from  6  feet  to  19 
feet  and  ennclosing  a  boundary  of  one  hundred  acres  of  land.  This  fort  is 
well  preserved  but  was  abandoned  prior  to  exploration  and  it  is  pretty  certain 
that  it  marked  the  spot  where  the  Cat  Nation  was  conquered,  for  only  such  a 
fort  could  have  contained  the  fifteen  or  twenty  thousand  Indians  present  at 
the  time  of  the  great  battle. 

21 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


The  Eries  surviving  were  absorbed  into  the  Iroquois  nation,  and  as  the 
Senecas  of  that  nation  occupied  the  western  border  they  naturally  became  the 
tribe  of  the  conquered  people,  and  their  numbers  were  so  great  that  the  towns 
of  the  Senecas  increased  from  four  to  thirty.  And  this  frontier  work  of  guard- 
ing and  amalgamating  with  a  conquered  people  naturally  resulted  in  the  Se- 
necas becoming  the  military  department  and  power  of  the  Iroquois  nation. 

Prior  to  this  time  the  Ohio  River  was  named  the  Black  Mingo  River,  and 
the  Indians  living  on  the  waters  of  that  river,  with  the  intolerance  of  race, 
were  called  Mingoes,  meaning  a  stealthy  treacherous  people,  by  those  living 
to  the  east  of  them.  This  racial  feeling  is  like  that  which  prompts  us  to  call 
Italians,  Dagoes,  and  Austrians,  Bohunks,  which  to  say  the  least  are  words 
of  little  esteem. 

And  so  the  Iroquois  council  found  a  question  of  foreign  affairs  before  it. 
In  considering  it,  they  referred  to  it  as  their  mingo  problems.  A  part  of  the 
policy  was  to  mix  the  native  stock  with  the  mingo  element  and  form  a  line  of 
villages  reaching  from  the  St.  Lawrence  river  south  to  Georgia,  policing  the 
whole  line  of  the  Endless  Mountains.  In  council,  if  a  statesman  arose  to  bring 
up  the  subject  of  the  faraway  village  on  the  head  of  the  Tygarts  Valley  River, 
he  would  probably  say:  "I  want  to  take  up  the  question  of  supplies  for  one 
of  our  mingo  towns,"  just  as  a  congressman  might  say  today:  "Here  is  a  mat- 
ter about  our  colonial  possessions."  In  the  Iroquois  council  we  can  almost 
hear  a  chief  say  to  the  English  ambassador  stationed  at  the  Capital  of  the 
Five  Nations:  "Yes,  we  of  the  old  original  stock  respect  the  contracts  we 
have  made  with  the  English,  but  our  widely  scattered  mingo  settlements  are 
of  mixed  blood  and  we  can  never  be  sure  that  they  understand  the  bond  that 
is  between  us.  And  then  they  are  apt  to  be  influenced  by  strange  tribes  like 
the  Delewares  and  Shawnees." 

It  is  interesting  to  trace  the  origin  of  the  word  Mingo.  It  first  meant 
chief  or  greatest.  It  became  the  name  of  the  great  river.  Then  it  was  used 
as  a  word  to  denote  the  inhabitants  of  the  country  drained  by  that  river. 
Then  to  distinguish  the  foreign  from  the  native  blood  of  the  Iroquois.  Then 
to  designate  the  towns  which  were  located  in  faraway  parts  of  their  posses- 
sions. And  finally  by  the  pioneer  white  men  to  mean  a  particularly  deadly 
tribe  of  Indian  outlaws  who  having  moved  to  the  far  bank  of  the  Ohio  harried 
this  country  for  more  than  twenty  years  during  the  days  of  the  first  settle- 
ments west  of  the  Alleghany.  The  English  tongue  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
it  is  fixed  and  made  definite  by  the  art  of  printing,  is  constantly  changing  the 
meaning  of  its  words.  For  example,  a  few  generations  ago  the  word  villain 
meant  a  tenant,  and  the  word  miser  meant  a  sick  person.  Both  are  in  uni- 
versal use  today  with  the  meaning  wholly  changed,  and  the  old  meaning  all 
but  lost. 

The  Batts  and  Fallam  expedition  got  as  far  as  the  Big  Kanawha  in  1671, 
and  reported  the  signs  of  a  Indian  town  near  the  falls  where  the  fields  were 
grown  up  with  weeds,  small  prickly  locusts  and  thistles.  That  reference  to 
second  growth  locusts  tells  its  own  tale  to  a  man  of  these  mountains.  It  fixes 
the  date  the  site  was  abandoned  as  fifteen  years  before  the  end  of  the  great 
war. 

It  is  fairly  certain  that  from  1656  to  1756,  an  even  hundred  years,  that 
the  Five  Nations,  that  is  the  Iroquois,  maintained  a  fighting  town  or  garrison 

22 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


on  this  part  of  the  great  Seneca  Trail,  which  extended  the  whole  length  of  the 
Appalachian  Mountains.  There  is  a  trace  of  an  old  fort  in  the  old  field  that 
gives  the  name  to  the  Old  Field  Fork  of  Elk,  fifteen  miles  east  of  Mingo 
Flats.  There  is  a  possibility  of  that  being  the  town  for  a  time.  But  in  1754, 
David  Tygart  wrote  a  letter  from  this  valley  saying  that  he  would  have  to 
leave  on  account  of  the  proximity  of  an  Indian  Village.  And  he  did  get  safely 
away,  but  the  Files  family  on  the  creek  of  that  name  at  Beverly,  did  not  get 
away  and  they  were  all  killed  by  these  Indians  that  same  year,  and  their 
bleached  bones  found  and  interred  in  1772,  eighteen  years  after. 

We  know  that  the  Iroquois  tried  to  help  Braddock  in  1755,  and  that  they 
were  driven  away  from  his  army  by  that  martinet.  We  know  that  tribe 
moved  away  from  this  place  in  1756,  and  that  they  went  just  beyond  the  juris- 
diction of  the  Iroquois.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  they  had  a  hand  in  the 
massacre  of  the  army  under  Braddock,  and  that  they  left  or  were  driven  out 
by  order  of  the  Iroquois  council  in  1756.  The  killing  of  the  Files  family  in 
1754  shows  that  they  were  being  corrupted  by  the  deadly  Shawnee  and  were 
getting  out  of  hand. 

From  1766,  to  the  present  day  their  history  is  definite.  In  1766  they  were 
found  at  Mingo  Bottom,  six  miles  above  Wheeling,  which  was  the  only  Indian 
settlement  immediately  upon  the  Ohio  river  between  Pittsburgh  and  Louis- 
ville.They  told  the  early  explorers  that  they  had  been  there  for  ten  years  and 
that  they  moved  down  from  the  head  of  the  Ohio  ten  years  before.  The  Ohio 
has  two  heads,  the  river  forking  at  Pittsburgh.  But  the  Tygarts  Valley  River 
and  the  Monongahela  form  by  far  the  longest  fork.  The  water  does  not 
divide  evenly  at  Pittsburgh.  The  southern  fork  is  the  longer  by  at  least  fifty 
miles.  But  the  clinching  fact  that  this  is  the  uttermost  fountain  of  the  Ohio 
where  they  lived  is  that  they  were  near  the  Shawnees  and  the  Delawares. 
That  is  true  of  Mingo  Flats  and  it  could  not  be  true  of  the  headwaters  of  the 
Alleghany  River,  the  north  fork,  for  the  Shawnees  were  southern  Indians 
forced  by  the  Cherokees.  The  Shawnees  were  split  by  the  mountains,  one 
part  going  to  the  east  and  settling  in  the  Valley  of  Virginia  and  the  other  in 
southern  Ohio,  so  that  the  road  between  the  two  Shawnee  places  ran  by  or 
through  Mingo  Flats,  and  the  Delawares,  originally  from  Delaware  river  were 
allied  with  the  Shawnees  in  the  French  and  Indian  war  of  the  seventeen 
fifties. 

There  will  never  be  a  better  time  than  now  to  fix  the  facts  in  history. 
Here  is  the  chart  of  the  Mingo  Indians,  so  called  because  of  the  handiwork 
shown  in  the  signs  of  the  atrocities  they  committed  on  the  pioneer  settlement 
of  our  ancestors: 

In  1755,  at  Mingo  Flats,  Randolph  County,  West  Virginia.  In  1766,  at 
Mingo  Bottom,  now  Steubenville,  Ohio,  numbering  60  families,  making  a  total 
of  about  300  persons.  In  1800  they  lived  on  their  own  lands  on  the  head  of 
the  Sandusky  and  the  head  of  the  Scioto  Rivers.  In  1831,  they  numbered  251. 
This  is  the  year  that  they  sold  their  lands  in  Ohio,  and  moved  to  lands  on  the 
Neosho  River  in  the  State  of  Kansas,  where  they  lived  until  1867,  when  they 
moved  to  the  Indian  Territory,  where  they  now  live.  In  1885  the  number  of 
the  tribe  was  239,  but  in  1905  they  numbered  366.  The  tribe  seems  to  have 
just  about  held  its  own  all  these  years,  and  it  seems  a  matter  of  regret  that 
an  effort  was  not  made  to  have  a  representative  of  the  tribe  present  on  this 
occasion. 

23 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


After  the  tribe  left  here  the  most  notable  conflict  with  them  In  this 
neighborhood  occurred  In  1780.  Thomas  Lackey  saw  Indian  tracks  at  Valley 
Head,  and  thought  he  herad  a  voice  saying,  "Let  him  alone  and  he  will  go 
and  bring  more,"  which  is  a  clear  case  of  telepathy.  He  warned  the  settlers 
at  Fort  Hadden,  but  the  next  day  a  party  under  Jacob  Warwick,  returning  to 
the  Greenbrier  settlements  were  fired  upon  by  Indians  in  ambush,  and  three 
men  killed:  John  McLain,  James  Ralston,  and  John  Nelson.  James  Crouch 
was  wounded  but  escaped.  Thus  passed  the  names  of  McLain,  Ralston,  and 
Nelson  from  this  valley,  but  Crouch  has  many  descendants.  A  similar  preser- 
vation of  a  name  occurred  in  Pocahontas  County,  the  same  campaign.  Two 
men,  Hill  and  Baker,  went  to  the  river  to  wash.  The  Indians  fired  on  them 
and  killed  Baker,  and  his  name  faded  away,  but  Hill  escaped  and  his  name 
is  one  of  the  most  common  of  family  names  in  that  county. 

We  are  here  to  dedicate  a  monument  to  the  memory  of  a  bitter  foe,  and 
to  preserve  an  historical  truth  by  writing  it  upon  tablets  of  stone.  And  every 
effort  that  is  made  to  preserve  the  memory  of  those  heroic  times  is  to  be 
applauded  and  encouraged.  And  no  less  important  is  the  duty  that  each  and 
everyone  of  us  owe  to  the  lives  of  the  departed  of  our  families  and  friends 
to  mark  the  last  resting  place. 

Many  years  ago  there  lived  in  Scotland  a  man  by  the  name  of  Robert 
Patterson  who  had  reached  the  age  of  eighty-six  years  at  the  date  of  his 
death.  The  last  forty  years  of  his  life  were  spent  on  traveling  from  church- 
yard to  churchyard  restoring  with  his  chisel,  the  tablets  marking  the  graves 
of  the  Hill-men  or  Cameronians,  who  had  been  persecuted  for  their  faith.  As 
it  is  so  beautifully  put: 

"In  the  dream  of  the  night  I  was  wafted  away, 

To  the  moorland  of  mist  where  the  martyrs  lay; 
Where  Cameron's  sword  and  his  Bible  are  seen 

Engraved  on  the  stone  where  the  heather  grows  green." 

This  remarkable  man  would  accept  nothing  for  his  work  and  Sir  Walter 
Scott  named  one  of  his  immortal  works  for  him  by  calling  it  by  the  name 
that  had  been  given  Robert  Patterson,  to-wit:  "Old  Mortality."  Yet  when 
it  occurred  to  Sir  Walter  Scott  to  search  out  the  place  where  Robert  Patter- 
son lay  buried  in  order  to  place  a  modest  monument  there,  he  could  not  dis- 
cover the  place  though  the  most  exhaustive  and  diligent  search  was  made. 
What  a  comment  upon  the  lack  of  appreciation  of  those  Old  Mortality  labored 
among. 

And  in  this  connection,  mention  should  be  made  of  the  fact  that  under 
the  laws  of  this  land  that  burial  expenses  are  made  the  first  charge  upon  the 
estate  of  a  descendant,  and  these  are  to  be  paid  even  before  debts  due  the 
nation  or  taxes  and  levies.  And  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  burial  expenses 
ought  to  include  the  cost  of  a  monument  in  proportion  to  the  size  of  the 
estate  accumulated,  and  that  if  we  could  imagine  a  descendant  objecting  to 
this  tribute  to  the  life  and  memory  of  the  departed,  that  courts  would  so  hold. 

"Our  lives  are  like  the  prints  which  feet 

Have  left  on  Tampa's  desert  strand; 
Soon  as  the  rising  tide  shall  beat, 

All  trace  will  vanish  from  the  sand." 

24 


ARTICLE    VII 


Address  at  the  Unveiling  of  the  Mingo  Monument 
BY  CAPTAIN  WILLIAM  H.  COBB 

On  a  former  occasion,  in  connection  with  the  proposal  to  build  a  monument 
you  are  today  unveiling,  I  was  called  upon  to  give  an  account  of  the  Mingo 
Indians,  and  having  paid  my  respects  to  them, — and  indirectly  to  those  who 
made  this  site,  in  former  times  sacred  to  the  Indians, — I  shall  not,  therefore, 
follow  the  line  of  the  article  which  some  of  you  honored  me  by  reading,  but 
will  confine  my  remarks  to  an  historic  race  that  preceded  the  tribe  we  call 
"American  Indians." 

The  subject  of  America  before  Columbus  is  not  known  as  it  deserves  to 
be  known  by  our  people,  and  thought  by  many  not  to  be  known  by  any,  but 
in  that  respect  you  may  be  mistaken,  for  the  trace  of  man  is  never  lost,  though 
It  be  thousands  of  years  in  the  past,  and  when  we  say  the  past,  it  may  mean 
many  thousands  of  years,  so  remote  that  man  dreams  of  such  an  age. 

Some  confusion  among  anthropologists  has  occurred  in  tracing  man  and 
his  works  in  the  past,  and  that  for  the  reason  that  they  all  do  not  agree  upon 
the  theory  of  the  creation  of  the  earth  and  man.  The  scientist  looks  only  to 
facts  as  he  finds  and  sees  them,  while  the  biblical  anthropologist  keeps  in 
mind  the  Mosaic  theory  of  creation  and  that  only  six  thousand  years,  or  nearly, 
have  transpired  since  man  came  upon  the  earth. 

The  men  whom  the  scientific  world  acknowledge  as  authority  upon  the 
subject  of  the  human  race  in  America,  place  man  here  as  long  ago  as  two 
hundred  thousand  years;  some  much  longer;  and  others  probably  not  as  long; 
while  those  of  the  biblical  account  would  place  the  prehistoric  man  upon 
the  continent  from  6  to  7  thousand  years  and  would  not  yield  one  day  more; 
but  it  would  appear  that  a  class  of  civilization  existed  in  America  long  cen- 
turies before  any  certain  and  definite  history  is  recorded  in  the  Mediterranean 
country  or  Asia  Minor. 

Who  was  the  prehistoric  man  in  America?  From  whence  did  he  come? 
And  of  what  race?  These  questions  have  not  been  answered  and  we  have  no 
certain  account  and  probably  never  shall  know. 

We  know  the  Mound  Builders  and  the  Cliff  Dwellers  were  different  and 
distinct  races,  or  at  least,  their  habits  and  characteristics  were  different  and 
they  did  not  follow  the  same  path  at  the  same  time. 

If  we  recall  our  Bible  history  correctly,  one  of  the  twelve  tribes  of  Israel 
was  lost  and  unaccounted  for  and  the  Jew  has  undertaken  to  account  for  this 
tribe  coming  to  the  western  hemisphere  and  being  the  ancestors  of  the 
American  Indian,  but  I  have  never  been  able  to  follow  their  course  of  reason 
to  a  favorable  conclusion  as  to  the  correctness  of  the  theory. 

So  long  ago  as  Plato, — a  few  hundred  years  before  the  birth  of  Christ, — 
he  gave  us  an  indefinite  description  of  the  "Elysium  fields,"  or  as  others  have 
interpreted  it,  "the  Western  Continent,"  and  not  only  a  vivid  description  of 

25 


HISTORY   OF  THE    MINGO   INDIANS 


the  climate,  the  people  and  the  glories  thereof,  but  of  a  mighty  race  that 
measured  favorably  with  the  known  Mediterranean  country,  and  there  can  now 
be  no  doubt  that  his  writings  and  those  of  like  nature  in  part  inspired  in 
Columbus  the  ambition  to  discover  and  locate  that  delightful  country.  In  this 
story  Plato  is  pictured  as  listening  at  the  feet  of  an  Egyptian  philosopher, 
who  told  him  that  Troy  and  her  heroes  in  war, — then  ancient, — was  but  as  a 
child  in  age.  Homer  sang  of  such  Elysium  fields,  as  did  many  who  followed 
him  in  early  ancient  Greece. 

That  a  civilization  existed  in  America  along  with  Egypt,  Greece  and 
Babylonian  civilization,  I  take  it  that  no  scholar  denies,  but  accepts  it  as  a 
fact,  and  that  this  civilization  was  equally  as  high,  is  in  fact  true. 

In  the  walks  of  life, — in  agriculture,  in  art,  in  architecture,  in  mathematics 
and  in  the  implements  of  war,  our  greatness  is  largely  measured  by  our  ability 
to  slay  the  most  men.  We  see  in  prehistoric  America  nothing  superior  in  the 
eastern  countries  of  Asia,  Europe  or  Africa. 

In  the  line  of  agriculture  these  people  raised  the  corn,  the  squash,  the 
gourd  and  many  of  the  modern  vegetables  of  this  day,  including  the  bean, 
tobacco  and  the  vine.  These  have  been  located  in  fhe  Mounds,  and  there 
through  ages  have  been  planted  and  grown  the  same  wheat  and  corn  we  now 
produce.  These,  in  the  days  of  which  I  speak,  were  fields  of  hundreds  of  acres 
scattered  universally  over  the  country  and  not  as  the  recent  Indian  cultivated 
his  patch  of  corn  and  tobacco  or  had  his  squaw  do  it,  but  these  early  people  in 
America  were  farmers  in  fact. 

In  art,  there  has  probably  never  been  seen  in  the  East  articles  of  greater 
fineness  and  requiring  more  skill  than  what  has  been  turned  out  by  these  pre- 
historic people.  The  vase  they  produced  was  an  ornament  of  wonder,  and  of 
different  shades  and  designs;  and  their  cooking  vessels  were  of  no  mean 
design;  their  cups  were  patterns  of  the  present  generation.  The  fernery 
vases  were  the  pride  of  the  age  and  no  less  than  800  or  1000  have  been  taken 
from  one  mound  in  the  state  of  Mississippi.  Nor  were  they  wanting  in  paint- 
ings and  pictures  in  which  all  life  was  represented,  such  as  the  birds,  the 
animals  and  the  snake, — the  smoke — a  thing  that  has  figured  the  world  over 
in  religion  and  myths  since  the  creation  of  man;  and  while  we  look  upon 
these  early  people  as  without  vision  and  resources,  if  we  only  reflect,  we  are 
now  practicing  many  of  the  pagan  ideas  that  controlled  them. 

In  architecture,  the  inhabitants  of  Mexico  and  Peru  were  artists,  and  while 
the  houses  were  of  the  one  story  character  generally,  the  decorations  were  so 
splendid  and  gorgeous  that  they  would  have  been  creditable  to  a  home  in 
the  glorious  days  of  Rome  or  Greece.  Curtains  of  the  finest  texture  and 
brilliant  colors  fell  over  the  doors  and  the  stucco  floors  were  covered  with 
mats  of  exquisite  workmanship,  representing  an  artistic  taste  that  has  prob- 
ably not  been  surpassed  in  any  age.  Another  work  of  art  and  industry,  and 
now  followed  by  the  Indian,  was  feather  work  in  which  no  people  has  excelled 
them. 

We  have  been  told  that  the  art  of  embalming  has  been  lost  as  practiced 
by  the  Egyptians,  and  while  that  is  true,  it  is  probable  that  the  embalmer  of 
the  Nile  had  nothing  on  the  prehistoric  American  in  this  art.  These  people 
built  crypts,  constructed  of  stone  or  beaten  or  sun  dried  earth,  for  the  preser- 
vation of  the  bodies;  the  body  first  having  been  chemically  treated,  and  in  this 

26 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


state,  after  thousands  of  years,  the  skeletons  have  been  found  in  a  surprisingly 
good  state  of  preservation.  The  art  of  cremating  was  practiced,  this  being 
carried  out,  in  a  way,  along  the  lines  of  the  modern  custom.  These  customs 
belonged  strictly  to  the  civilization  of  the  true  prehistoric  races  of  both 
North,  Central  and  South  America,  and  like  the  Egyptian  civilization,  the  fine 
arts  were  lost  and  the  rude  and  rough  customs  took  their  places. 

If  gorgeous  flowers,  mourners,  the  lying  of  the  corpse  in  state,  the  viewing 
of  the  body  by  the  family  and  friends,  and  guards  standing  by  for  protection, — 
with  the  practice  of  sacrificing  human  beings,  as  readily  as  Abraham  offered 
his  only  son  Isaac, — if  this  constitutes  the  higher  civilization,  then  these  pre- 
historic Americans  were  in  the  class  of  the  earliest  Egyptians,  Babylonians 
and  Jews. 

In  the  mounds  in  which  these  bodies  were  placed  we  find  that  the  de- 
ceased were  men  of  renown  and  wealth,  and  a  part  of  their  belongings  were 
buried  with  them.  In  these  burial  places  and  by  their  sides  we  find  the  sea 
shell  from  the  Atlantic  Ocean  and  the  Mexican  Gulf;  the  copper  from  the 
shores  of  Lake  Superior;  mica  from  North  Carolina;  silver  from  Mexico;  lead 
from  Wisconsin;  jade  from  Chili;  the  skin  and  painting  of  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tain lion, — these  things  representing  the  commercial  intercourse  of  the  people 
from  the  Arctic  Ocean  to  Cape  Horn.  How  this  commerce  was  carried  on 
is  only  explained  by  the  art  of  the  canoe  and  sail  boat  and  overland  travel, 
but  certain  it  is  that  it  occurred  and  was  no  more  marvelous  than  the  travel  in 
Asia  or  Africa  at  that  time. 

The  mound  builder,  who  figured  so  extensively  in  Ohio,  and  in  fact  in 
all  parts  of  the  United  States,  constructed  nearly  10,000  mounds  alone  in  that 
state,  and  it  is  said  that  if  these  mounds  were  placed  side  by  side  they  would 
give  a  length  of  over  300  miles.  The  swampy  section  of  Missouri  is  especially 
noted  for  its  mounds,  and  the  two  states  and  Illinois  have  2500  known 
moun'ds.  Canals  to  connect  lakes  in  Florida  were  constructed  and  were  also 
built  in  our  western  country  for  irrigation  purposes,  and  it  would  seem  that 
some  of  these  were  built  prior  to  the  extension  of  volcanic  activities  in  the 
Rocky  Mountain  region. 

The  mummies  of  this  age  have  been  found  wrapped  in  cotton,  cloth  and 
skins,  with  feathers  as  an  ornament,  which  were  rolled  in  mats  and  bound 
with  rods  strung  together,  resembling  Japanese  blinds. 

The  religions  of  this  people  were  along  uncertain  lines,  as  has  been  the 
history  of  the  world  over,  and  while  it  was  definite  in  a  sense,  and  at  times 
directed  from  those  in  authority,  it  was  never  accepted  as  a  whole,  and  there 
were  no  doubt  Pharisees,  Sadducees,  conformists  and  infidels,  as  is  and  al- 
ways has  been  the  practice  of  both  the  civilization  and  the  barbarian,  or  half 
civilized. 

In  this  connection,  it  is  upon  the  subject  to  say  that  in  the  high  civiliza- 
tion of  Mexico  and  Peru  that  priests  and  ministers  were  brought  up  in  the 
faith  of  the  day;  that  boys  and  girls  were,  at  an  early  age,  specially  taught 
for  religious  work,  their  faith  being  in  a  supreme  being,  which  might  have 
been  worshipped  through  the  sun,  moon  or  stars;  or,  as  in  some  instances, 
there  was  the  ancestral  worship,  similar  to  China  and  Japan.  But  in  this  it 
should  be  remembered  that  there  is  a  faith  beyond  the  ancestor,  that  is  sup- 
posed to  be  reached  through  the  parent. 

27 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


It  should  be  here  stated  that  there  is  not,  so  far  as  we  can  get  information, 
a  great  and  distinct  difference  between  the  beliefs  and  practices  of  these 
people,  and  that  of  a  similar  date  in  the  old  world.  They  did  not  know  and 
were  not  absolutely  certain  and  fixed  in  their  minds, — nor  were  the  people  of 
any  other  ancient  country, — just  what  the  life  of  man  meant  or  what  future 
awaited  them,  and  from  the  teaching  of  our  day,  mixed  with  spiritualism  and 
thousands  of  other  "isms"  of  the  day,  a  man  who  thinks  is  none  too  certain 
himself, — certain  that  he  does  not  know. 

In  matters  of  government,  these  people  exhibited  the  same  disposition 
that  has  ruled  man  from  the  very  earliest  day,  that  the  stronger  should  rule 
the  weaker, — if  not  by  will,  by  force. 

And  if  we  know  the  history  of  the  people  from  the  remotest  age, 
whether  in  the  old  or  in  the  new  world,  we  find  the  same  traits  and  charac- 
teristics in  tribes  and  nations,  the  stronger  ruling  the  weaker,  if  men  and 
implements  of  war  can  enforce  it;  and  under  this  practice  history  teaches  us 
that  nations  have  risen  to  their  heights  in  Asia,  Europe  and  Africa,  and  In 
turn  been  wiped  out  by  some  other  great  power.  No  matter  what  country 
we  point  to  in  the  distant  history,  it  has  gone  the  way  of  the  other. 

Leagues  of  Nations  and  Alliances  were  not  unknown  to  the  prehistoric 
race  in  America  and  for  the  moment  worked  in  theory,  but  in  time  distant 
races  and  those  not  in  harmony  with  the  greater  would  rebel  and  seek  to 
live  to  themselevs  and  worship  God  under  their  own  vine  and  fig  tree.  This 
would  bring  dow'n  the  wrath  of  the  League  upon  them  and  in  instances  this 
has  brought  destruction  upon  the  strong  in  waging  war  upon  a  distant  tribe. 
The  alliance  with  the  central  head  in  Mexico,  about  the  center  of  the  western 
hemisphere,  was  never  able  to  enforce  strict  observance  by  the  outer  tribes 
and  nations. 

In  studying  these  people,  it  is  of  interest  to  know  that  every  color  of 
mankind  was  represented  in  prehistoric  America,  and  that  brings  us  to  the 
question  as  to  whether  all  races  sprung  from  the  Adam-Rvo  race  or  whether 
there  was  a  preadamite  and  that  theory  is  not  without  Interest,  but  time 
will  not  permit  its  discussion. 

My  reading  and  study  upon  the  question  of  the  origin  of  the  human  race 
has  brought  me  to  the  belief  that  man  is  indigenous  to  America;  that  is,  that 
the  prehistoric  man  of  the  western  hemisphere  was  created  or  brought  to 
being  in  this  country,  and  that  in  no  wise  conflicts  with  the  biblical  story  of 
the  creation;  man  could  have  gone  from  this  country  as  well  as  from  Asia  to 
America  and  God  could  have  started  the  race  here  as  well  as  in  Asia. 

The  Irish  have  given  an  interesting  account  of  St.  Brendon  in  the  6th 
century,  coming  to  America  on  his  two  trips  covering  a  period  of  eleven 
years,  and  who  was,  they  claim,  the  first  to  plant  the  cross  of  Christ  on  the 
continent.  On  this  point  great  stress  is  laid  upon  the  fact  or  assertion  that 
the  Cross  was  religiously  recognized  by  the  people  upon  Columbus'  discovery. 
The  cross  may,  and  probably  did  eixst,  at  this  time  in  America,  and  if  so 
for  the  same  reason  it  existed  in  the  eastern  countries  before  Christ. 

It  is  also  claimed  by  Buddhists  that  monks  of  the  5th  century  visited 
America  and  planted  their  religion  and  instituted  their  rites  and  ceremonies 
among  the  people,  and  this  claim  has  ground  to  stand  upon.  But  with  all  of 
this,  I  am  inclined  to  the  belief  that  neither  Christian,  Irish  priest  or 

28 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


Buddhist,  before  Columbus,  ever  planted  any  religious  Doctrines  here,  but  on 
the  other  hand  that  the  great  God  of  the  Universe  gave,  through  nature,  the 
religious  beliefs  they  possessed  and  nature  did  this  in  the  same  way  she 
imparts  inspiration  the  world  over. 

The  study  of  man,  the  race  and  the  nation  has  brought  the  student  to  the 
conclusion  that  all  men  sprung  from  the  same  source;  that  the  same  God 
created  them,  and  you  may  trace  the  race  from  the  original  to  the  present 
time  and  no  special  characteristic  appears  in  one  from  the  other  to  any 
material  extent.  So  we  have  to  conclude  that  man,  the  world  over,  has  been 
uniformly  good  and  great  and  uniformly  wicked  and  evil,  in  this,  that  at 
times,  a  great  and  good  spirit  has  ruled  him  and  that  at  others  the  evil  has 
directed  his  walk.  That  at  different  times  in  the  history  of  many  of  the 
races  or  nations  of  men,  there  has  been  greatness  in  the  national  and  spiritual 
life  of  the  nation,  and  following  the  fate  of  their  predecessors,  have  fallen 
into  the  depths  of  depravity. 

On  the  ruins  of  Troy  of  old,  for  centuries  the  world  accepted  the  story 
of  Troy  as  only  a  fancied  story  of  Homer,  and  when  excavations  developed 
the  ruins,  they  discovered  the  city  as  described  by  poets,  they  also  found 
buried  underneath  the  city  of  Trojan  fame,  two  other  buried  cities  of  which 
no  account  of  their  date  was  obtainable.  It  may  have  been  that  the  ray  of 
history  kept  alive  by  repeating  the  story  from  one  generation  to  the  other, 
gave  Plato  and  others  of  his  age  the  key  to  the  story  of  an  ancient  race  that 
lived  to  the  west  of  the  Atlantic  and  that  in  antiquity  and  greatness  and 
beauty  their  country  was  but  an  infant. 

This  may  be  a  fancy,  but  there  is  ground  for  the  belief.  Research  in  the 
western  hemisphere  has  developed  grandeur  that  is  not  surpassed  by  the 
wonders  of  the  pyramids  of  Egypt  and  possibly  more  ancient  or  co-equal  in 
age.  These  structures  fully  define  the  use  of  the  square,  the  circle,  the 
triangle  and  other  geometrical  figures.  According  to  competent  engineers  it 
would  take  thousands  of  workmen,  well  provided  with  modern  machinery,  an 
age  to  construct  and  build  one  of  the  great  temples  in  Peru.  The  stones  going 
into  some  of  these  structures  were  37  ft.  in  length  and  8  ft.  in  thickness  and 
are  estimated  to  weigh  200  tons,  and  removed  from  a  quarry  40  miles  away. 
In  this  way  we  can  conceive  how  ancient  our  country  is  and  what  may  have 
occurred  in  the  whole  history  of  the  ages  it  has  passed  through. 

We  are  prone  to  regard  the  prehistoric  man  of  America  as  a  barbarian, 
and  the  last  of  the  race  was  largely  so.  Nevertheless,  the  man  of  thousands 
of  years  ago  measured  well  with  the  civilization  of  other  countries  and  es- 
pecially the  countries  we  would  refer  to  as  havTng  a  glorious  history. 

It  is  true  these  people  had  customs  we  now  condemn  and  attribute  to 
the  evil,  or  ignorance  of  the  time.  But  when  we  reflect  that  they  too  had 
their  superstitions  and  burned  man  for  witchcraft, — we  did  Ihe  same  at  a 
period  not  too  remote  in  European  history,  and  under  the  laws  of  Massa- 
chusetts, not  two  hundred  years  aog,  witchcraft  was  a  violation  of  both  the 
material  and  spiritual  laws.  Witchcraft  was  in  vogue  in  the  time  of  the  Jew, 
for  Saul  in  distress  called  upon  the  witch  of  Endor  to  put  him  in  communi- 
cation with  the  departed  Samuel,  and  if  the  Jew  could  practice  it,  why  not 
in  the  western  hemisphere,  and  if  the  good  spirit  led  Abraham  to  offer  his  son 
as  a  sacrifice,  why  not  permit  the  American  man  to  follow  also  his  dictations 
from  his  gods. 


HISTORY  OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


In  conclusion,  let  me  suggest  one  thought  as  to  the  age  of  man  in 
America: — Bancroft  In  his  "Native  Races  of  the  Pacific  States"  tells  us 
America  was  peopled  from  Asia,  but  the  Jesup  research  informs  us  that  "A 
notable  effort  was  made  under  the  auspices  of  Morris  K.  Jesup,  president  of 
the  American  Museum  of  Natural  History,  to  settle  more  definitely  the  ques- 
tion of  the  origin  of  the  American  Indians.  Mr.  Jesup,  in  consultation  with 
a  number  of  eminent  anthropologists,  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  only 
satisfactory  way  to  discover,  if  there  were  any  evidences  of  contact  between 
the  early  settlers  of  America  and  Asia,  was  to  make  a  thorough  investigation 
of  the  oldest  remaining  tribes  of  both  countries.  With  this  end  in  view  the 
"Jesup  North  American  Expedition  of  the  American  Museum  of  Natural  His- 
tory" was  organized  in  1897,  and  for  seven  years  it  studied  the  characteristics, 
customs,  traditions  and  languages  of  the  Indian  tribes  in  America  from  the 
Columbia  River  to  Northern  Alaska,  and  in  Asia  as  far  south  as  the  line  of 
civilization.  By  studying  how  long  the  tribes  had  been  on  the  Pacific  Coast, 
what  changes  had  taken  place  in  the  tribal  physical  characteristics,  and  what 
relation  the  various  tribes  bore  to  one  another,  it  was  possible  to  trace  the 
relationship  between  the  Asiatic  and  American  tribes,  and  probably  the  cause 
of  emigration  in  prehistoric  times.  The  result  of  the  expedition  points  to 
the  existence  of  Intimate  relationship  between  the  Asiatic  and  American 
Indians,  and  the  conclusion  of  the  members  of  the  expedition  is  that  the  Indian 
originated  in  America  and  spread  Into  Asia." 

Taking  the  prehistoric  man  in  Peru  as  an  example  of  the  advancement  in 
the  arts  of  civilization,  we  find  them  prior  to  the  coming  of  Columbus  with 
post  and  military  roads  such  as  Ceasar  built  in  his  campaigns  against  the 
people  in  Western  Europe  and  in  fact  as  highly  commendable  as  European 
roads  of  the  first  class,  and  such  road  leading  from  the  capitol  of  their  country 
to  the  utmost  limits  of  the  state;  with  stone  culverts  over  the  small  streams 
and  ravines,  and  swinging  bridges  over  the  rivers,  and  over  these  roads 
daily  postmen,  guards  and  other  officials  with  information  for  the  different 
branches  of  the  government  passed,  along  which  houses  were  provided  for 
resting  and  refreshment  stations,  and  over  which  the  fruits  and  fish  of  the 
coast  country  was  carried  to  the  ruler  and  royal  family. 

The  Spartan  government  of  three  thousand  years  ago  was  probably  no 
wiser  In  its  establishment  than  this  ancient  country  and  It  might  appear  that 
the  two  countries  had,  though  thousands  of  miles  separated  and  a  different 
tongue,  many  of  the  features  were  similar.  The  citizenship  was  divided  into 
classes  of  50;  Into  100;  into  500  and  into  1000,  over  which  was  an  officer,  who 
ruled  them  in  accordance  with  the  laws  provided  by  tfie  king. 

Judges  were  appointed  over  the  people  to  judge  of  the  crimes  committed 
and  injustice  done  the  citizen,  and  in  most  cases  the  verdict  was  death, 
though  it  could  be  mitigated.  It  was  a  capitol  offence  to  turn  the  water  from 
a  neighbors  field  into  your  own;  blasphemy  against  the  sun  was  a  capitol 
offense  and  so  was  the  burning  of  a  bridge  or  the  crime  of  adultery. 

The  production  of  the  whole  state  was  divided  into  three  parts,  the  first 
of  which  went  to  the  Sun-God  (his  representatives)  the  second  to  the  Inca — 
the  king — and  the  third  and  last  to  the  people,  and  in  this  it  would  eeem 
that  the  Jewish  idea  prevailed  in  the  observance  of  the  sun-god. 

30 


HISTORY   OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


The  land  was  divided  among  all  the  people — every  man  having  a  certain 
parcel,  and  this  was  given  at  marriage  and  as  the  children  came,  extra 
acreage  was  further  granted,  and  as  the  children  were  married  off,  certain 
acreage  was  deducted  from  the  crown  tenant,  and  at  certain  intervals,  the 
whole  went  back  to  the  king  and  another  division  was  made,  and  in  this  way 
no  unconditional  grant  was  ever  fixed  in  one  party.  The  guano  deposits  of 
the  Pacific  Coast  was  utilized  for  the  enrichment  of  the  soil  and  enlarging 
the  crops  to  maintain  the  dense  population. 

A  strict  registration  was  required  of  the  births  and  deaths  of  the  people, 
which  is  very  similar  of  this  date  of  all  countries  to  take  a  census  upon 
conquering  a  new  country  and  keeping  in  touch  with  the  whole  of  the 
population. 

Another  provision  of  the  Peruvian  government  was  to  establish  and  main- 
tain a  series  of  store  houses  or  magazines  over  the  country  and  a  certain 
portion  of  all  the  agricultural  production  was  therein  stored,  a  provision  in 
case  of  war,  widows  and  orphans  and  lastly  a  famine,  as  was  done  in  Egypt 
when  the  Jews  visited  that  country. 

The  king,  his  family  and  the  princes,  as  of  old  and  as  at  present  where 
they  exist,  were  the  wards  of  the  country  and  this  country  was  no  exception 
to  all  others,  in  both  good  government  at  times  and  bad  at  others.  Gold  and 
silver;  corn,  cotton,  wool  and  the  other  modern  productions  were  the  staples 
of  the  date  in  of  which  we  speak. 

The  sun,  with  other  lesser  gods  were  the  source  of  worship,  and  this 
worship  was  required  of  the  people,  especially  of  the  laymen,  who  could  have 
but  one  wife,  while  the  royalty  could  have  all  he  wanted — such  was  the 
history  in  the  western  hemisphere  a  few  thousand  years  ago;  times  have 
changed  many  things,  but  the  human  characteristics  still  exist. 

The  characteristic  government  of  the  Inca's  in  Peru  at  the  coming  of 
Columbus  is  but  the  kindred  in  character  of  those  through  Central  and  North 
America,  at  that  time  long  past  their  zenith  in  greatness;  their  heights  hav- 
ing been  reached  many  centuries  before.  The  most  gorgeous  temple  of  pre- 
historical  times  was  probably  in  Chololu,  in  Mexico,  where  the  outer  walls 
covered  acres  of  ground,  the  temple  being  1400  feet  long  and  the  perpen- 
dicular walls  rising  177  feet  and  covering  more  ground  than  the  jyramids  of 
Egypt  and  its  antiquity  records  by  equal  centuries. 

Near  the  city  of  Mexico  stood  the  capitol,  which  probably  represented 
the  nations,  states  and  empires  of  the  western  hemisphere,  where  slaves, 
criminals  and  captive  tribes  were  sacrificed  by  the  thousands  for  rebellious- 
ness and  to  appease  the  gods  of  war.  Yucatan,  if  we  rely  upon  the  excavation 
made  by  scientist,  antiquarians  and  scholars,  once  contained  a  citizenship 
far  surpassing  that  of  any  other  country  of  equal  antiquity. 

In  our  south  western  country  of  Arizona  there  existed  an  agricultural 
advancement  rivaling  what  our  government  and  people  contemplate  by 
modern  irrigation  in  that  section  and  when  that  country  is  made  the  garden 
spot,  agriculturally,  in  America,  it  will  probably  not  far  surpass  what  it  was 
under  the  reign  of  the  prehistoric  America.  The  canal  was  in  operation  in 
that  section  when  the  Jew  was  making  the  sun-dried  brick  in  Egypt  and  the 
prehistoric  man,  of  which  we  speak,  was  making  a  similar  one  for  his  people; 
the  magazine  or  store  house  was  annually  supplied  for  a  "seven  year  famine," 

31 


HISTORY   OF  THE   MINGO   INDIANS 


and  the  civilization  moving  then  in  the  East  four  thousand  years  ago  did  not 
surpass  that  of  the  West,  and  it  would  seem  that  the  same  spirit  of  advance- 
ment, both  spiritually  and  materially  moved  equally  for  the  good  and  evil 
in  both. 

It  is  not  at  all  improbable  that  in  our  middle  and  western  prairie  states 
were,  as  has  been  stated  by  writers,  once  covered  with  a  forest  as  dense  as 
the**eastern  and  western  sections  of  our  country,  but  cleared  for  agricultural 
purposes  in  order  to  sustain  an  immense  population. 


5^9188 


82 


3  1 158  01000  5998 


If    i 


